Sept. 16, 2004
By FISNIK ABRASHI
(AP) Gunmen kidnapped two Americans and a Briton Thursday from a house in an upscale Baghdad...
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Gunmen kidnapped two Americans and a Briton from a house in an upscale Baghdad neighborhood at dawn Thursday, a brazen attack that brought to eight the number of Western civilians held hostage in Iraq.
Ten assailants in a minivan pulled up a tree-lined street in the al-Mansour district - home to many embassies and foreign companies - and snatched the three from their walled, two-story house, said Col. Adnan Abdul-Rahman, an Interior Ministry official.
The U.S. Embassy identified the Americans as Jack Hensley and Eugene Armstrong but gave no ages or hometowns. Britain's foreign office did not identify the third hostage but said it was identifying the person's relatives. All three worked for Gulf Services Company, a Middle East-based construction firm, Abdul-Ramen said.
U.S. troops fanned out across the neighborhood to investigate the latest abductions in an insurgent campaign aimed at driving out U.S.-allied forces and deterring foreign companies from working in Iraq's reconstruction.
Hundreds of foreigners have been abducted during the 17-month insurgency, many of them executed though some of them freed. A Jordanian truck driver was released Thursday after his employer bowed to militant demands, agreeing to stop working in Iraq to save the driver's life.
As militants tend to target foreigners whose countries with troops or businesses in Iraq, the persistent threat has created a siege-like mentality among the country's dwindling international community.
Foreign businesses, aid groups and news organizations have hired armed guards in bulletproof vests and built blast walls around their compounds to protect against the daily onslaught of mortars, car bombs and other violence. Security checkpoints have increased in the capital and many roads have been blocked off, frustrating drivers with gridlock.
No shots were fired in Thursday's abduction and there was no sign afterward of a struggle - though a car was missing from the house, witnesses and Abdul-Rahman said.
A neighbor who gave his name as Majid, 23, said he left his house around 6 a.m. during a power outage to switch on a generator.
"I noticed unusual movement in the garage. I heard voices that sounded like someone was trying to drag somebody else," he said. "I was frightened and left the area, but when I came back to the foreigners' house I saw that the outer gate was open and the foreigners' car had gone."
Another witness, 19-year-old Ziad Tareq, said he saw a man dressed in black, his face covered with a red scarf, dragging one of the hostages by the collar and pushing him into a car parked outside the house.
Several foreign embassies, contracting and security companies and many prominent Iraqi politicians are based in the al-Mansour neighborhood, which is normally teeming with security guards.
It was not immediately clear whether the three kidnapped were guards themselves or involved in reconstruction projects. A police official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it appeared the three were oustide the house when they were abducted.
Before Thursday, the Westerners held hostage in Iraq were two Italian aid workers, two French reporters and an Iraqi-American businessman.
Truck drivers bringing essential supplies over the border have been frequent militant targets, seen as collaborators for working with U.S. forces. Insurgents this week singled out Jordan, saying its drivers would be killed if they entered Iraq. At least 12 Jordanians have been abducted since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003; many of them have been executed.
News of the Jordanian truck driver's release, reported by Jordan's official Petra news agency, came a day after his employer - Ibrahim Abul-Sheeh al-Zubi's Transport Company - said it had ceased operating in Iraq.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned Wednesday that he feared the continued insecurity in Iraq - including a surge in attacks that has killed more than 200 people since last weekend - would block elections slated for January.
He also reiterated his judgment that the American-led attack on Iraq, conducted without U.N. approval, was a violation of the U.N. charter. "From our point of view and the (U.N.) charter point of view it was illegal," Annan said in an interview with the British Broadcasting Corp.
Meanwhile Thursday, a U.S. Humvee hit a roadside bomb south of the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah, the military said in a statement. Witnesses said the vehicle was ablaze on a main road and that troops had sealed off the area.
The latest violence came a day after villagers found three decapitated bodies in the town of Dijiel, 25 miles north of Baghdad.
The bodies were found Wednesday in nylon bags, the heads in bags alongside them, said Abdul-Rahman said. They were all men with tattoos, including one with the letter 'H' on his arm, but no documents were found on them, he said.
A U.S. military official said the bodies appeared to be Iraqis and had their hands tied behind their backs; that would be unusual, as Iraqis have usually been abducted for ransom and not executed.
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