IRAQ: Two Americans were freed by Iraqi police yesterday but a third foreigner was found dead, a day after five security guards were kidnapped when a truck convoy was hijacked at a bogus security checkpoint.
It was unclear if the dead man was one of two other Americans or a former Austrian soldier seized in the incident near the Kuwaiti border, an official working for the governor of Basra province said. Arab media quoted police as saying the Austrian was dead.
After the operation near the border town of Safwan, the hunt was continuing in the nearby Dewajin district for the two missing men, a police source said.
In an apparently unrelated incident in the town of Zubayr earlier yesterday, the British military said a British private security guard was wounded in a clash with Iraqi police.
Police said two policemen and another Westerner were killed in that incident at Zubayr, a mainly Sunni enclave in Iraq's heavily Shia south. Zubayr also has administrative control of Safwan and Dewajin, leading to confusion about the two events.
British spokesman Capt Tane Dunlop said British troops killed two gunmen in a raid near Safwan, although that was not related to the hunt for the five foreigners.
The men were seized, along with nine Asian drivers who were quickly released, when 43 trucks and six security vehicles were halted near Safwan by men in police uniform, officials said.
The attack was the latest of several incidents this week in which gunmen in uniform have taken hostages.
There was no word yesterday about dozens of Shia bus passengers feared kidnapped at fake security checkpoints on Thursday in a Sunni district of west Baghdad.
Sectarian tensions were fuelled by an arrest warrant in a terrorism investigation for the country's top Sunni cleric, Harith al- Dari. At prayers yesterday, Sunni preachers condemned the warrant for Dari, who calls attacks on US troops "legitimate resistance". - (Reuters)