Iraqi militants kill 12 Nepali hostages, website claims

7.34am

BAGHDAD - A militant Iraqi group said it had killed 12 Nepali hostages and showed pictures of one being beheaded and others being shot dead, the worst mass killing of captives since a wave of kidnappings erupted in April.

The announcement of the killings, made in a statement posted on an Islamist website on Tuesday, came as France intensified its efforts to save two French reporters held hostage by a separate group as a deadline set by their captors neared.

The Nepalis were kidnapped earlier this month when they entered Iraq to work as cooks and cleaners for a Jordanian firm.

In a small Nepali village near terraced paddy fields about 25km from the capital Kathmandu, the father of one of the hostages wept inconsolably after hearing the news.

"Oh Lord, why have you kept me alive," said Jit Bahadur, father of hostage Ramesh Kadhka who was lured to Iraq by the hope of earning 40,000 rupees ($864) a month -- six times what he would have made from his old job working in a restaurant.

Bahadur's wife fainted when the family received a call at a public telephone from a reporter saying their son was dead.

The killing of men from a tiny country that has had nothing to do with the invasion or occupation of Iraq will send shockwaves through foreign companies doing business in Iraq.

"We have carried out the sentence of God against 12 Nepalis who came from their country to fight the Muslims and to serve the Jews and the Christians ... believing in Buddha as their God," said the statement by the military committee of the Army of Ansar al-Sunna.

The group posted a series of photographs showing the killing as well as a video. The recording showed two masked men, one in camouflage, holding down a hostage. One of the men then used a knife to behead the hostage and then hold his head aloft.

The video then showed a group of hostages lying face down and being shot by a man using an automatic rifle. It then showed bodies splattered with blood and bullet wounds.

Nepal urged the international community to take action against those responsible.

"This barbarian act of terrorism to kill innocent civilians without asking for any conditions for their release is against the minimum behaviour of human civilisation," the Nepali foreign ministry said.

Ansar al-Sunna said it had kidnapped the Nepalis because they were cooperating with United States troops.

Scores of nationals from more than two dozen countries have been kidnapped since April, when guerrillas embarked on new tactics to force foreign troops and firms to leave Iraq.

The tactic has scared away some foreign companies, disrupted supplies to US troops and discouraged investment.

Besides the Nepalis, about a dozen foreign hostages have been killed, some of them beheaded. Around 20 hostages are still being held, many of them truck drivers from poor countries seeking good money by plying Iraq's dangerous highways.

France mounted a major diplomatic effort to save the two French reporters as a deadline neared for Paris to scrap a ban on Muslim headscarves in schools as the kidnappers demanded.

Foreign Minister Michel Barnier visited Jordan and Egypt to drum up support for appeals to the militants holding Georges Malbrunot and Christian Chesnot, shown on Arab television on Monday fearing for their lives.

"I am renewing my solemn call for their release," said President Jacques Chirac, in Russia to meet anti-Iraq-war allies Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. "Everything will be done to secure their release."

Islamic militants Hamas joined a chorus of groups including Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and aides to anti-US Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr urging freedom for the journalists.

France staunchly opposed the US-led invasion of Iraq.

In a statement sent to Al Jazeera on Monday evening, the kidnappers gave France 24 hours to repeal its ban on headscarves in state schools, part of a broader law that also bars Jewish skullcaps and large Christian crosses.

A senior Arab League official said on Tuesday evening that according to information from some of the league's friends in Iraq, the deadline had been extended 48 hours, not 24 hours as previously reported.

The Islamic Army in Iraq, a little known group that kidnapped the two journalists, did not specify the fate of the two men if there was no repeal, but the group claimed responsibility for the death of an Italian journalist last week.

- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq