NewsMax.com Wires
Tuesday, July 27, 2004

Story Continues Below

  Meanwhile, officials announced that a three-day national conference to choose an interim assembly would begin on July 31, a step seen as key to any democratic transformation. The conference had been due to be finished by the end of the month, but the United Nations requested a delay because preparations were far behind schedule, conference chair Fuad Masoum said.

Militants have launched an increasingly audacious wave of kidnappings in Iraq aimed at driving the United States' allies out of the country and causing chaos.

Besides the two Jordanian employees snatched Monday, another group abducted two Pakistanis, and third group said it would launch attacks to cut off the highway between Jordan and Baghdad, a key supply route for the U.S. military.

The Amman-based firm Daoud and Partners, which provided construction and catering services for the military, said it would comply with the demands of the kidnappers, who threatened to kill the two employees, Fayez Saad al-Udwan and Mohammad Ahmed Salama al-Manaya'a, by Thursday unless the company leaves Iraq.

"I am ceasing operations and pulling out from the company's premises in Iraq for humanitarian reasons, and out of my concern for the safety and the lives of my two employees who were kidnapped in Iraq," the company's director Rami al-Ouweiss told The Associated Press.

Earlier Tuesday, a group of male relatives of the two hostages gathered outside the company's offices in the Jordanian capital and threatened to behead al-Ouweiss and kill all the staff unless the kidnappers' demands were met.

The U.S. military declined to comment on how the company's pullout will affect their operations.

In Baghdad, Mohammed Mamdouh Helmi Qutb, the third ranking diplomat at the Egyptian mission here, arrived at his country's embassy in the Baghdad neighborhood of Mansur a day after his captors freed him.

"Thanks to God, we are going to perform our work at the embassy. There is no problem," Qutb told reporters. He said his treatment during captivity was "very good."

The Egyptian diplomat's kidnappers said they seized him to deter his country from giving security aid to Iraq. An Egyptian official in Cairo said no ransom was paid, and the kidnappers released Qutb after realizing Egypt was not sending troops.

State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said, "Our information is that the Egyptian government did not make concessions."

Unlike Them

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

Four or five mortars were fired early Tuesday toward Baghdad's so-called Green Zone, the site of Iraq's interim government and the U.S. and British embassies, the U.S. military said.

One mortar hit the Salhiya district, just outside the Green Zone, killing an Iraqi garbage collector and injuring another, according to an Associated Press Television News cameraman at the scene.

"This poor guy was just doing his job, and he has been killed by a mortar ... intended for the coalition," resident Muthana Joma Hassoun told APTN.

A military spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity, said mortar fire injured 14 soldiers, but their nationalities were not immediately clear.

In Mahmoudiya, 25 miles south of Baghdad, gunmen assassinated the assistant director of the city hospital. Qassem el-Obaidi was shot dead by assailants in a car as he was driving home from work late Monday, said the hospital's director, Dr. Daoud al-Ta'i.

In the southern city of Basra, about 50 armed members of firebrand Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's militia snatched about 20 people Monday during raids against people selling and drinking alcohol, police said. The detainees were later handed over to police. During the raids, militiamen dragged men out of their houses and smashed cartons of canned drinks, apparently beer, Al-Arabiya TV showed in broadcast footage.

In other violence, an explosion damaged a house in the village of Niemieyah, south of the city of Fallujah on Tuesday, injuring six Iraqis, said Dr. Thaer Abdullah of Fallujah General Hospital.

The cause of the blast was not immediately clear. The U.S. military said it was not active in the area.

© 2004 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Editor's note: