Zarqawi group executes five guardsmen in Iraq
Pakistan Times Monitoring Report

DUBAI/BAGHDAD: The group of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi aired a video on the Internet Saturday purporting to show the execution of five members of the Iraqi National Guard in the militant stronghold of Ramadi west of Baghdad.

The video showed five men in civilian clothes being fatally shot in the back after they were shown sitting on the floor with five hooded gunmen behind them, one of whom read a statement announcing that they would be executed.

The video, whose authenticity could not be independently confirmed, bore the name of “Al-Qaeda Group of Jihad in the Country of Two Rivers in Ramadi.”

Al-Qaeda Group of Jihad in the Country of Two Rivers is the name of the group headed by Zarqawi, Iraq’s most wanted man.

Iraqi police discovered Saturday two beheaded corpses in a pair of white bags in western Baghdad’s al-Khadra neighbourhood, an interior ministry official said.

“The first, Mohammed Abdul Motaleb had an Iraqi identity card and documents showing he worked for the multi-national forces, while the second man had no identity papers,” the ministry official said.

In Baghdad at least three roadside bombs targeted Iraqi security troops Saturday, a day after Prime Minister Ayad Allawi warned Iraq’s neighbours to crack down on insurgents infiltrating from their territory, saying that Iraq’s patience was wearing thin.

Al-Qaida, meanwhile, claimed responsibility for a bold attack on U.S. troops.

Iraqi officials have repeatedly accused Syria and Iran of supporting the insurgents waging a campaign of violence against American forces and Allawi’s U.S.-backed government. Both countries have denied helping militants or allowing them to cross their borders into Iraq.

But Allawi’s comments Friday to Baghdad’s Al-Iraqiya television were among his toughest yet. “Some countries are hosting people who are involved in harming the Iraqi people,” he said, without naming any nations. “Harming Iraq and its people is not allowed.”

He said his government had contacted the countries and was waiting for their reply. “According to the answers we will decide what the next step will be,” he said.

In new violence, a U.S. Marine assigned to the I Marine Expeditionary Force was killed in action Friday during security operations in the Al Anbar Province, the Marines said in a statement, which did not provide any other details.

A roadside bomb explosion struck an Iraqi National Guards patrol south of Mahmoudiya, a town about 25 miles south of Baghdad. It left one guard dead and six wounded, an ING officer said Saturday.

Another bomb went off while a U.S. military convoy was driving through southern Baghdad’s Dora district on Saturday, witnesses said. The blast damaged nearby shops, but apparently caused to casualties.

In the town of Youssifiya, just south of Baghdad, another bomb exploded early Saturday, wounding two guardsmen who were on patrol, police said.

Hardline Islamists vowed to target Iraq’s elections, just weeks away, as Prime Minister Iyad Allawi declared that Iraq’s future lay with democracy.

In the dawn of 2005, the opposing visions of Iraq offered by Allawi, a vocal advocate of next month’s polls, and fundamentalist hardliners revealed the high stakes in the war-torn country.

Allawi delivered his thoughts on state-owned Al-Iraqiya television, in a light blue shirt and a brick red tie in front of a row of books and an Iraqi flag.

“The new year will be decisive in the history of our nation and its future,” he said.

The three-minute message seemed like it was taped in Allawi’s office in the fortified Green Zone, home to the interim government and the US embassy.

The mayhem of post-Saddam Iraq intruded almost immediately after the broadcast, when a string of explosions rattled central Baghdad.

US and Iraqi forces braced for violence. Adel Lami, of Iraq’s Independent Electoral Commission, said about 100,000 police and national guard will be mobilized.

Iraqi voters are to choose a transitional 275-seat National Assembly, a parliament for the semi-autonomous Kurdish region and 18 provincial councils.

However, the elections are unfolding against a backdrop of ethnic and religious tension and a tenacious insurgency responsible for assassinations and bombings.

The US military on Saturday released 260 detainees from the notorious Abu Ghraib prison west of Baghdad and Camp Bucca in southern Iraq.

The releases came under the auspices of the Combined Review and Release Board, which groups six representatives from the Iraqi government and three US military officers.

The US military continues to hold an estimated 7,000 security internees, with 4,700 of those held at Camp Bucca, near the port of Umm Qasr, and 2,300 at Abu Ghraib.

Seven prison guards have been charged in connection with the incidents of physical and sexual abuse and two of them have been convicted.

Probes are still ongoing into the mistreatment of prisoners in Iraq and also at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, home to the main prison facility for suspected Islamic radicals captured in Afghanistan.

Iraq will reintroduce coins into circulation for the first time since Saddam Hussein’s regime abolished them in the aftermath of the 1990 Gulf War, a spokesman said Saturday. Starting next week, Iraqis will be able to use coins of 25, 50 and 100 dinars, Central Bank spokesman Zuheir Ali Akbar said.

Coins were scrapped in 1991, when the international embargo sent Iraq’s annual inflation rate soaring upward of 1,000 percent.

Meanwhile, Iraq’s national carrier Iraqi Airways made its first post-Saddam Hussein era flight from Baghdad to the southern port of Basra Saturday, a British military spokesperson said. About 50 people were on board the Boeing 737, which landed at Basra international airport, said British military spokesman Major David Gibb.●