Prime minister's cousin released by kidnappers

IRAQ: Kidnappers have freed the cousin of Iraqi interim prime minister Mr Iyad Allawi, Arab satellite television Al Arabiya …

IRAQ: Kidnappers have freed the cousin of Iraqi interim prime minister Mr Iyad Allawi, Arab satellite television Al Arabiya said yesterday.

The channel, which was quoting its correspondent, gave no further details.

An Iraqi government spokesman in Baghdad said he could not confirm that Mr Ghazi Allawi had been freed.

A previously unknown Islamist group seized the prime minister's 75-year-old first cousin along with his wife and their daughter-in-law, who was said to have been nine months pregnant, in Baghdad on November 9th.

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Arab satellite televisions said last Sunday the women had been released.

The group had threatened to kill the three unless Iraq's government called off a US-led assault on the rebel-held city of Falluja and freed prisoners.

The government said it would not be influenced by the abductions, which took place a day after Mr Allawi ordered a full-scale assault on Falluja, which his government and the US military said had become a haven for foreign Islamist fighters.

Mr Allawi said during the offensive against Falluja that he did not believe any civilians were killed in the offensive, but witness accounts contradicted him. A member of an Iraqi relief committee told Al Jazeera television he saw 22 bodies buried in rubble in Falluja's northern Jolan district last week.

An audio tape, purportedly from al-Qaeda ally Mr Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, urged insurgents to mobilise against US-led forces to stop them from attacking other cities after Falluja.

Scores of Iraqis and foreigners have been seized by Islamic militant groups and criminal gangs. Some have been freed, while others have been killed, several by beheading.