Militants extend Filipino hostage’s execution date

THE kidnappers of a Philippine hostage in Iraq have extended by nine days their deadline for Manila to withdraw its troops or see him executed, a senior diplomat said yesterday.

"I am told that the deadline has been extended by nine days till July 20. This has given us hope that the hostage is alive and the kidnappers are realising that he has nothing (against them),” the diplomat said on condition of anonymity.

He refused to provide further details or say whether he or other officials were directly or indirectly in contact with the kidnappers.

Manila rejected yesterday a deadline by the kidnappers of Angelo del la Cruz to withdraw its handful of soldiers and policemen earlier than scheduled or see the hostage beheaded.

“In line with our commitment to the free people of Iraq, we reiterate our plan to return our humanitarian contingent as scheduled on 20 August, 2004,” Foreign Secretary Delia Albert told a news conference following an emergency cabinet meeting.

On Saturday, Al-Jazeera television broadcast a purported statement from the hostage-takers saying that the Philippine government had until 11.00 pm (1900 GMT) yesterday to prove its intentions to withdraw its 51 servicemen from Iraq by June 20 or the 46-year-old father of eight would be executed.

Meanwhile, a co-ordinated roadside bomb attack on a US convoy in northern Iraq killed a US soldier and an Iraqi civilian yesterday.

The attack, in which one soldier also was wounded, began yesterday in Beiji about 90 miles south of the northern city of Mosul when a bomb exploded at the side of the road, the military said in a statement. A vehicle then raced toward the patrol and fired on the soldiers, who returned fire, killing the driver, the military said.

The attack set an oil tanker ablaze, and thick black smoke filled the air, witnesses said. The Iraqi civilian killed by the bomb had been travelling behind the convoy.

The deaths came a day after four US Marines were killed in a vehicle accident near Camp Fallujah in western Iraq, the military said yesterday.

More than 875 service members have died since the beginning of military operations in Iraq.

The country has been torn by a persistent insurgency for more than 14 months. In recent months, insurgents have begun kidnapping and threatening to kill foreigners.

Another militant group, the Tawhid and Jihad movement linked to Jordanian terror suspect Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, yesterday claimed responsibility for an attack Thursday on a military headquarters in the city of Samarra that killed five US soldiers and an Iraqi National Guardsman. The group claimed to have killed dozens of Americans and hundreds of Iraqis. The military said insurgents detonated a car bomb and then fired mortars at the building used jointly by the 1st Infantry Division and Iraqi guardsmen.

The military said five soldiers and one Iraqi guardsman were killed in the attack.

Al-Zarqawi’s network claimed responsibility for near-simultaneous attacks in four cities across Iraq in June that included car bombings as well as military-style ambushes on Iraqi security forces and US troops.

US military officials feared Iraq’s secular guerrillas, tied to the former regime of Saddam Hussein were co-ordinating their attacks with al-Zarqawi.

Demonstrators, some supporting the former regime, others opposed to it, took to the streets yesterday.

In Baqouba north of Baghdad, about 100 people marched through the shopping district, chanting pro-Saddam slogans, waving rifles and carrying posters of the former leader.

Demonstrators in Baghdad held a mock trial and execution of Saddam, hoisting an effigy from a hangman’s noose and setting it on fire.

Demonstrators in Baghdad held a mock trial and execution of Saddam, hoisting an effigy from a hangman’s noose and setting it on fire.

Separately, five women, calling themselves “The Iraq Suicide Group,” in Baghdad’s Shi’ite neighborhood of Sadr City, threatened lawyers who “dare to breach the limits of God” by representing Saddam.