Germans kidnapped in Iraq make video appeal

BAGHDAD - Two German hostages held in Iraq appeared in a video aired by al Jazeera television last night and urged their government to help secure their release, while the fate of a kidnapped US journalist remained unknown.

The two German engineers were shown with gunmen in the background, a chilling scene that has become familiar since Muslim militant groups began seising foreigners to make political demands.

Their voices could not be heard, but Jazeera said "the recording shows the two men urging their government to help secure their release".

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier swiftly appealed to the kidnappers to free the men and promised Berlin would not do anything rash that would endanger their lives.

"The German government will do everything it can to free the two men," he told reporters in Berlin, describing the tape as "devastating".

Jazeera said the tape was received from a group calling itself the Brigade of Ansar al-Tawheed Wa-Sunna, which did not make any demands through the recording.

The video was aired a day after US forces freed five Iraqi women detainees, in a case that has been linked to the high- profile kidnapping of American journalist Jill Carroll.

Authorities have insisted the release of the five women, who were held as terrorism suspects, was pre-planned and not connected to demands made by Carroll's kidnappers.

They have threatened to kill her unless all women prisoners are released, and set a 72-hour deadline in a video aired on Jan. 17. Four women are still in US custody.

A US embassy spokesman said he had heard of no new developments on Carroll, a freelancer for the Christian Science Monitor abducted by gunmen in Baghdad on January 7.

After a relative lull, there has been an upsurge in the number of kidnappings of foreigners in the past three months, stepping up pressure on Iraqi leaders also struggling to ease rebel suicide bombings and shootings.

Iraqi police commandos, soldiers and US troops mounted raids on the southern Baghdad district of Saydiya early on Friday morning and conducted house-to-house searches for suspected insurgents, arresting more than 20, witnesses said.

Clashes also broke out. A Reuters photographer said he saw a body lying on the street.

Repeated crackdowns have failed to break a rebel network of Sunni Arab insurgents who have vowed to topple Iraq's US- backed Shi'ite and Kurdish leaders.

The two German engineers - identified in German media reports as Rene Braeunlich and Thomas Nitzschke - were kidnapped on Tuesday in the Iraqi industrial town of Baiji.

They were only on their third day of work at a detergent plant when seised.

More than 200 foreigners and thousands of Iraqis have been abducted in the anarchy that followed the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Most foreign hostages have been released, but 54 are known to have been killed; dozens are still believed to be held.

They are kidnapped by militant groups with political motivations or criminal gangs who demand ransom. Gangs sometimes sell them on to militants as well.

- REUTERS