Iraqi militants said yesterday they had killed three Turkish captives, as France pressed on with diplomatic efforts to win the release of two French journalists held hostage by another guerrilla group.
The Arabic al-Jazeera satellite station said the Tawhid and Jihad group had claimed responsibility for killing the Turks.
Tawhid and Jihad is the group led by Jordanian al-Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Washington's most wanted man in Iraq with a US$25 million price on his head.
Meanwhile, seven foreign truckers held hostage for six weeks were released after their employer paid US$500,000 ransom as France worked frantically to muster the support of Muslims at home and abroad to win the release of two kidnapped French journalists.
Militants waging a violent 16-month insurgency in Iraq have increasingly turned to kidnapping foreigners here in recent months as part of an effort to drive out coalition forces and contractors. Other groups have taken hostages in hopes of extorting ransom, sometimes masking their greed under a cloak of politics.
The group holding the seven truck drivers, which called itself "The Holders of the Black Banners," had demanded their employer stop working in Iraq, that Iraqi detainees be released and that compensation be paid for the victims of fighting in the Iraqi city of Fallujah.
By last week, they had dropped all the other demands and said they just wanted a commitment from the company, Kuwait and Gulf Link Transport Co, to stop working here, which it soon received.
But after the seven men -- one Egyptian, three Indians and three Kenyans -- were released Wednesday and whisked out of the country, the company gave a different version of events, saying the kidnappers had actually demanded US$6 million to US$7 million in ransom.
In the end, a team of employees drove to an unspecified location where the drivers were held and paid US$500,000 -- an immense fortune here -- to secure their release, KGL chief executive officer Said Dashti said.
"They [the kidnappers] were not trying to make a political statement, they were purely extortionists," he said.
The announcement the men were freed sparked celebrations in their home countries.
In a bizarre video given to news agencies soon after the release, the seven hostages are shown standing against a wall as a masked man shakes each man's hand, hugs him and hands him a Koran, another Islamic book and what appears to be a CD or cassette.
Also see stories:
EUROPEAN TARGETS: The planned Munich center would support TSMC’s European customers to design high-performance, energy-efficient chips, an executive said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said that it plans to launch a new research-and-development (R&D) center in Munich, Germany, next quarter to assist customers with chip design. TSMC Europe president Paul de Bot made the announcement during a technology symposium in Amsterdam on Tuesday, the chipmaker said. The new Munich center would be the firm’s first chip designing center in Europe, it said. The chipmaker has set up a major R&D center at its base of operations in Hsinchu and plans to create a new one in the US to provide services for major US customers,
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday said that it would redesign the written portion of the driver’s license exam to make it more rigorous. “We hope that the exam can assess drivers’ understanding of traffic rules, particularly those who take the driver’s license test for the first time. In the past, drivers only needed to cram a book of test questions to pass the written exam,” Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱) told a news conference at the Taoyuan Motor Vehicle Office. “In the future, they would not be able to pass the test unless they study traffic regulations
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying
‘COMING MENACINGLY’: The CDC advised wearing a mask when visiting hospitals or long-term care centers, on public transportation and in crowded indoor venues Hospital visits for COVID-19 last week increased by 113 percent to 41,402, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday, as it encouraged people to wear a mask in three public settings to prevent infection. CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said weekly hospital visits for COVID-19 have been increasing for seven consecutive weeks, and 102 severe COVID-19 cases and 19 deaths were confirmed last week, both the highest weekly numbers this year. CDC physician Lee Tsung-han (李宗翰) said the youngest person hospitalized due to the disease this year was reported last week, a one-month-old baby, who does not
RSS