Militants seize four new hostages as diplomat freed

Kidnappers released a senior Egyptian diplomat they had seized outside a mosque as two other militant groups threatened to kill four new foreign hostages amid an increasingly audacious wave of kidnappings in Iraq.

Yesterday, militants freed Mohammed Mamdouh Helmi Qutb, the third-highest ranking diplomat at the Egyptian mission in Iraq, after intense negotiations, an Egyptian foreign ministry official said.

The kidnappers said they had seized Qutb to deter his country from giving security aid to Iraq’s government. An Egyptian official said from Cairo no ransom had been paid, and the kidnappers released Qutb after realising Egypt was not sending troops.

The group, The Lions of Allah Brigade, said it had freed Qutb because he was a religious man and had good morals, according to a statement sent to the Arab television station Al-Jazeera.

Another group calling itself the Islamic Army in Iraq announced it had kidnapped two Pakistanis and passed a death sentence against them in part because of Pakistani president General Pervez Musharraf’s statements about the possibility of sending troops to Iraq. The group did not say when it would kill the men, identified by the Pakistani government as Raja Azad, 49, an engineer, and Sajad Naeem, 29, a driver.

“The people and government of Pakistan are in deep agony over the kidnapping of innocent Pakistanis,” said Masood Khan, spokesman for the foreign ministry. “Our faith, Islam, teaches the sanctity of human life. We appeal to them to release the hostages.”

Separately, a group calling itself the Mujahedeen Corps announced it was holding two Jordanian drivers and demanded their Jordanian company stop co-operating with US forces and cease doing business in Iraq or they would kill the hostages in 72 hours.

If the company did not comply “it will bear the consequences of the killing and retribution against these two men”, a militant said on a video obtained by Associated Press Television News.

The video showed the two, identified as Fayez Saad al-Udwan and Ahmed Salama Hassan, seated on the floor, while six masked militants, carrying a variety of weapons including a sword, stood behind them.

Fighters have used the violence, and more recently the abductions, to sow chaos, pressure countries to withdraw their troops and scare foreign contractors.

More than 70 foreigners have been taken hostage in recent months, but the kidnappings escalated after the Philippines decided to withdraw its soldiers last week to secure the release of a kidnapped truck driver.

Another video released by a separate group holding seven drivers and threatening to kill them, yesterday extended the deadline for the men. The masked kidnappers did not say how long the deadline had been extended.