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Sunday, July 4, 2004

Meanwhile, a Lebanese foreign ministry official said that Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun, a U.S. Marine of Lebanese heritage, was believed to have been killed by insurgents in Iraq. Militants claimed in a Web site message Saturday that they had beheaded Hassoun.

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The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity Sunday, said the ministry received a call from Lebanon's chief of mission in Baghdad saying Hassoun had been killed.

``He (the diplomat) is trying to confirm the killing 100 percent, but it seems to be over. He is now trying to learn where his body is. He believes it is in Fallujah,'' the official told The Associated Press in Beirut. ``We understand that he was slaughtered. God help him.''

The U.S. military in Baghdad said it was checking into the report of the 24-year-old Hassoun's death but had no confirmation.

Iraqi officials in the city of Baqouba said Sunday morning that a man driving a car rigged with explosives tried to attack the National Guard building there. The attacker got out of the car and the Iraqi troops opened fire, killing the man and setting off the explosives in the car, according to police chief Waleed al-Azawi.

Hospital officials reported that two bystanders were killed in the explosion.

Another car bombing targeted a passing U.S. convoy west of Baghdad around 8:30 a.m. causing no injuries, said Maj. Phil Smith of the 1st Cavalry Division.

In Baghdad, an explosion shook the home of an Education Ministry employee, in another attack targeting officials working with the interim government. Even low-level workers have been subjected to attack by insurgents who see the employees as collaborators with U.S. forces.

The violence Sunday was part of ongoing attacks that have plagued Iraq for more than 14 months since the fall of Saddam Hussein.

An Iraqi police official announced Sunday that U.S. and Iraqi forces have detained six members of a militant group suspected of carrying out a string of assassinations in the country's northern region. The men were reportedly members of Ansar al-Islam, a Kurdish group believed linked to al-Qaida, said Col. Sarhat Qader of the Iraqi police.

The fate of Hassoun, the U.S. marine, remained unclear. If confirmed, the slaying would be the fourth decapitation of a foreign hostage in the region since May.

An Iraqi militant group calling itself the Ansar al-Sunna Army posted a claim on a Web site Saturday saying it had killed Hassoun after luring him into a trap involving a love affair with an Arab woman. The statement said video would be released later.

Hassoun's brother Sami said from the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli that ``we don't have any news.''

Lebanese Foreign Minister Jean Obeid described Hassoun's killing as ``irreligious, immoral and inhumane. Those who carried out the killing are the enemies of their religion and any religion.''

In the Web site posting, the group identified itself as the Ansar al-Sunna Army in Qaim, a town on the Syrian border that has seen frequent clashes between U.S. troops and militants.

``We would like to inform you that the Marine of Lebanese origin, Hassoun, has been slaughtered. You are going to see the video with your very eyes soon,'' said the statement, signed in the name of the group's leader, Abu Abdullah al-Hassan bin Mahmoud.

``We will show a new video of the detention of a new infidel hostage and as recently promised, the beheading of rotten heads,'' the statement said.

It also said it had taken another hostage but did not give details.

``Withdraw your army and you will be safe. Or else we will keep doing what we are doing,'' the group said.

On June 27, the Arab television station Al-Jazeera broadcast a videotape showing Hassoun blindfolded, along with a statement from militants threatening to kill him unless the United States released all Iraqis in ``occupation jails.''

In that initial statement, the kidnappers identified themselves as ``Islamic Response,'' the security wing of the ``National Islamic Resistance - 1920 Revolution Brigades,'' referring to the uprising against the British after World War I.

Saturday's claim on Hassoun's death was issued on the same Islamic extremist Web forum where footage was posted last month showing the beheading of U.S. engineer Paul M. Johnson Jr., in Saudi Arabia. The site also often carries claims of attacks by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant said to be operating in Iraq.

Al-Zarqawi's movement claimed responsibility for the beheading last month of Kim Sun-il, a South Korean who worked for a company delivering supplies to American forces, and Nicholas Berg, an American businessman, whose body was found in Baghdad in May. Johnson's slaying was claimed by al-Qaida-linked militants in Saudi Arabia, and pictures of his severed head were posted on the Internet.

Another militant group in Iraq claimed last week that it had killed Spc. Keith M. Maupin, of Batavia, Ohio, an American soldier held captive since April. The military has not yet confirmed that it was Maupin who was shown in grainy video footage of a man being shot in the back of the head.

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