Four hostages freed after Baghdad raid

Members of a Shiite Muslim militia raided a house in Baghdad and freed four hostages including Syrian and Lebanese citizens, an official in radical cleric’s Muqtada al-Sadr office said today.

The freed hostages identified themselves as Syrian Hisham Salem, Lebanese Mustafa Abdul-Rassoul Hussein, and dual Syrian-Lebanese citizen Atta Ibrahim. The fourth was an Iraqi Kurd who identified himself as Haji Alawi.

The men were held in an apartment in Baghdad’s northern neighbourhood of Shaab, said Amer al-Husseini, of al-Sadr’s office in the nearby Shiite neighbourhood of Sadr City. The four were released late last night, al-Husseini said.

“The four were exhausted,” al-Husseini said, adding that no one was injured in the raid. He refused to say what happened to the kidnappers and whether the four were held for ransom or for political purposes.

Sheik Sabah al-Kinani, a group commander in al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia, said a clash broke out between the kidnappers and the militiamen who raided the flat wounding one of the kidnappers. The three other kidnappers fled, he said.

Al-Kinani said the Lebanese and Syrian citizens were businessmen while the Kurd was a restaurant owner.

Insurgents have kidnapped more than 200 foreigners in Iraq. Numerous Lebanese citizens have been kidnapped and released, some after the payment of ransom. One Lebanese hostage, Hussein Ali Alyan, was killed in June last year and three Lebanese workers were shot dead in Baghdad in September.