Westerner Beheaded by Gang in Iraqi Street

December 17, 2004
By Jenny Booth
Times Online

Insurgents have beheaded a Western man on the streets of Mosul today and killed two other Westerners and their Iraqi driver, witnesses told the Reuters news agency.

A white, American-made sedan car containing the four victims was attacked while it was at a road interchange in the northern Iraqi city. Guns were fired and the car was set ablaze, the witnesses said.

Four bodies could be seen lying on the street close to the burning vehicle. Three were apparently Westerners, all dressed in jeans and windbreaker tops and seeming to be in their 20s and 30s. The head of one man lay on the pavement next to his body.

The fourth person, apparently an Arab, could be seen lying near the burning wreckage, his body partly consumed by flames.

Witnesses told Reuters that one of the Western men was briefly taken hostage by the insurgents. When he tried to flee they decapitated him, leaving the head lying in a pool of blood near his body on the street. The Associated Press news agency says that the man's head is "nearly" severed.

The witnesses said that the murdered men had been carrying small automatic weapons. The attackers seized the weapons before setting the car alight.

Passports were also found on the victims, but they were thrown into the burning vehicle, the witnesses said, adding that one of the men appeared to be Turkish and two others looked European.

The attack happened at the Yarmouk traffic intersection in Iraq’s third-largest city, 360 kilometers (225 miles) northwest of Baghdad. A crowd quickly gathered around the bodies and the burning wreckage.

Captain Zeid Waseem of Mosul police confirmed that officers had received reports that three foreigners and their Iraqi driver had been killed. The names and nationalities of the non-Iraqis was not yet known.

Mosul was initially peaceful after the US-led invasion but became a trouble spot after American and Iraqi troops invaded the rebel stronghold of Fallujah last month.

The city experienced a surge in violence, when groups of guerrillas overran around a dozen police stations, looted them of weapons and then burned or blew them up.

Since then there have been nearly daily attacks against US and Iraqi security forces in the city and troops have battled to restore order.

In the last five weeks about 160 bodies, including many affiliated with the Iraqi National Guard and police, have been found abandoned. Police say the insurgents are targeting security forces in a bid to strengthen their grip.

It is not clear who is behind the killings or what the motive is, though some appear to relate to ethnic tensions between Arabs and Kurds.

One person was killed yesterday when seven mortar rounds struck near government offices, and security forces found the bodies of six unidentified Iraqi civilians in the west of the city who had been shot dead, according to Lieutenant Colonel Paul Hastings, a US military spokesman.

Residents found a further two Iraqis wearing civilian clothes who had been shot in the head in Hamdaniyah, about 30 kilometers (19 miles) east of Mosul.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7374-1406876,00.html