Iraqi militants kidnap another foreign woman

A video of a Polish woman, kidnapped in Baghdad last night, was shown on Al-Jazeera television today.

A militant group – the Abu Bakr al-Siddiq Fundamentalist Brigades – claimed the woman works with US troops in Iraq.

Interior Ministry spokesman Colonel Adnan Abdul Rahman said the woman was a long-time Iraq resident with Iraqi citizenship and was believed to have been abducted from her Baghdad home last night.

Officials identified her as Teresa Borcz-Kalifa, aged about 60, who is married to an Iraqi and has lived in Baghdad since the 1970s.

She once worked for the Polish embassy, translating and taking visa applications but was dismissed for “disciplinary” reasons in 1994.

On the video, the grey haired captive, dressed in a pink polka-dotted blouse sat in front of two masked gunmen, one of whom was pointing a pistol at her head. Her voice was not audible on the tape.

Al-Jazeera said the woman called on Polish troops to leave the country and for US and Iraqi authorities to release all female detainees from the Abu Ghraib prison. The announcer said she had been “working in Iraq for a long time.”

Ahmed al-Sheikh, Al-Jazeera’s editor-in-chief, said the kidnappers did not mention a specific threat on the tape nor did they give a deadline for their demands to be met. He would not say when or how the station obtained the tape.

Poland commands 6,000 troops from 15 nations – including 2,400 of its own - in the Babil, Karbala and Wasit provinces of Iraq.

The armed group had also claimed responsibility in the September kidnapping of 10 Turkish hostages, who were released this month.

Last night, Al-Jazeera aired a video showing British aid worker Margaret Hassan, who again pleaded with Britain to withdraw its forces from Iraq even as some 800 British troops began deploying toward the Baghdad area.

Mrs Hassan, 59, who ran CARE International’s operations in Iraq, has been the most high-profile of foreign hostages abducted in Iraq. No group has claimed responsibility in her abduction.

She also asked for the release of female Iraqi detainees and the closure of CARE’s operations in Iraq.

A day earlier, a militant Web site ran a claim by the al-Qaida-linked group led by Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi vowing to kill a 24-year-old Japanese hostage within 48 hours unless Japan withdrew its 500 troops from the country.

Japan’s Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi swiftly refused the demand, saying he wouldn’t give in to terrorists.