Captors threaten to kill Romanian journalists as 9 die in Iraq Violence
Pakistan Times Monitoring Report

BAGHDAD (Iraq): Captors threatened to kill three Romanian journalists unless Bucharest pledged withdrawal of its troops from Iraq within four days as a car bomb killed nine people outside a Baghdad mosque packed with Shiite worshippers.

Another 26 people were wounded by the blast during the main weekly Muslim prayers, in what appeared to be the latest in a string of sectarian attacks by Sunni Arab militants against Iraq’s Shiite majority community.

“Six of those hurt are in a serious condition,” said a staffer at the capital’s Kindi hospital where many of the casualties were treated.

An interior ministry official said the attack might have been a suicide operation. “Some witnesses said they saw a bomber in the car, a white BMW, but we are checking these reports,” he said.

The ultimatum to the Romanian government came in a videotape sent to the Qatar-based Arabic satellite channel Al-Jazeera.

Footage Aired

The footage showed the three hostages—Marie-Jeanne Ion and Sorin Miscoci of Prima TV and Eduard Ohanesian of Romania Libera—appealing to their government to announce the withdrawal of all 800 Romanian troops within four days “otherwise they will execute us.”

Romanian President Traian Basescu cut short a visit to the Moldovan capital Chisinau on the news. The trio were kidnapped March 28 in the latest of a string of abductions of foreign hostages in Iraq. As the US military launched an investigation into the crash of a civilian helicopter Thursday in which 11 foreigners, including six American security guards, were killed, video footage was posted on the Internet purporting to show the execution of a lone survivor.

The Islamic Army in Iraq said it downed the Bulgarian chopper and showed what it said was the blazing wreckage of the aircraft and the bodies of the victims. A voice was heard on the tape saying “look at this filth” over the image of what appeared to be a wounded survivor.●