Two Americans and a Briton were kidnapped from their plush Baghdad home Thursday, as the two main powers behind last year's invasion became the latest victims of a five-month-old hostage crisis.
The new abductions came against the backdrop of fresh UN criticism of the US-led intervention, with Secretary General Kofi Annan for the first time describing the invasion as "illegal."
Interior ministry spokesman Colonel Adnan Abdul Rahman said the three hostages worked for a Gulf-based private equipment firm.
Armed men drove up in a minibus shortly after 6am and burst into the trio's home in the upmarket Mansur neighborhood of the capital.
British and US diplomats were scrambling to obtain hard information on the abduction after initial reports described all three hostages as British.
"We've heard the report from the interior ministry and we're trying to get to the bottom of it," US embassy spokesman Richard Schmierer told reporters.
A British spokeswoman said only that the embassy was desperately trying to determine what happened.
The raid on the trio's private home was reminiscent of the way two Italian women aid workers and two Iraqi colleagues were snatched at gunpoint from inside their house in a quiet residential area of Baghdad earlier this month.
It was likely to further deplete an already dwindling expatriate community whose know-how is seen as essential to plans to revive the war-shattered economy and build a new Iraq.
Two French journalists kidnapped almost a month ago were still being held by a Sunni militant group despite relentless efforts by their government to secure their release.
More than 100 foreigners are thought to have been abducted in Iraq since April, as insurgents have adopted a new tactic alongside their longstanding diet of mortar and rocket-propelled grenade attacks and roadside bombings.
A massive car bomb attack against the capital's main police station killed 49 people Tuesday and a new explosion rocked the capital at noon on Wednesday.
The surge of violence coincided with the publication by the New York Times of extracts from a US intelligence report painting a bleak picture of Iraq's future.
Without providing any specific details of the 50-page report prepared by the National Intelligence Council, one official who had read it said it contained "a significant amount of pessimism."
In another blow to the US administration, Annan gave an interview to the BBC in which he described last year's invasion as "illegal."
"I've indicated that it was not in conformity with the UN charter from our point of view, and from the charter point of view it was illegal," he said.
Annan also said it was unlikely that Iraq would be able to hold "credible elections" as planned in January 2005 "if the security conditions continue as they are now."
US President George W. Bush, in the midst of a re-election campaign dominated by a debate on the war in Iraq, did not immediately react to the UN chief's comments.
But Australian Prime Minister John Howard hit back at Annan, accusing him of heading a "paralyzed" body and insisting the war was legitimate.
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
Hundreds of Filipinos and tourists flocked to a sun-bleached field north of Manila yesterday, on Good Friday, to witness one of the country’s most blood-soaked displays of religious fervor, undeterred by rising fuel prices. Scores of bare-chested flagellants with covered faces walked barefoot through the dusty streets of Pampanga Province’s San Fernando as they flogged their backs with bamboo whips in the scorching heat. Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalists said they saw devotees deliberately puncturing their skin with glass shards attached to a small wooden paddle to ensure their bleeding during the ritual, a way to atone for sins and seek miracles from
RSS