Austrian hostage reported killed in Iraq

An Austrian security guard taken hostage with four Americans was killed and one of the American captives seriously wounded, Iraqi police said today.

It was not immediately known if the two were harmed when their convoy was attacked on Thursday or if they were casualties of fighting that broke out today between US and British forces and gunmen in the Sunni Arab-dominated region in southern Iraq where the hijacking occurred.

Two gunmen were killed in the fighting today in the town of Safwan, but it was not known if the hostages were being held there. Nor was it known if the gunmen in today’s clash were involved in the kidnapping, said Capt. Tane Dunlop, a British spokesman.

When the Crescent Security Group convoy was hijacked just north of the Kuwait border on Thursday, 14 Crescent employees were kidnapped. Five of them – an Austrian and four Americans – were taken hostage. Nine Asian workers were quickly released, the company said.

In another development today, the influential Association of Muslim Scholars urged Sunni politicians to quit the government and parliament, a day after the Shia interior minister issued an arrest warrant for the organisation’s leader, Harith al-Dhari, for allegedly inciting terrorism and violence among the Iraqi people.

Association spokesman Abdul-Salam al-Kubaisi said the arrest warrant was a cover for “the acts of the government’s security agencies that kill dozens of Iraqis every day.” He called for Sunni “political groups to withdraw from parliament and the government, which has proven that it is not a national government.”

Sunni Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi also condemned the arrest warrant saying “it is destructive to the national reconciliation plan.” In a statement, Al-Hashimi urged the government to cancel the warrant immediately.