Text in RED has been found omitted from other sources using this CNN story where otherwise, it was written word-for-word. — Ed.


April 15, 2004
CNN

Officials inspect car of Iranian diplomat who was killed Thursday in Baghdad.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- An Iranian diplomat in Baghdad has been shot and killed, Iranian Embassy officials said Thursday, a day after Iran said the United States had requested Iranian help to defuse Iraqi violence.

The embassy said the diplomat was Khalil Naimi, first deputy of the Iranian Embassy in Iraq.

Naimi was killed near the embassy in the Salhiya neighborhood of Baghdad, according to embassy officials.

On Wednesday, an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman said U.S. representatives had passed along a letter to Iran requesting help in quelling the recent insurgent uprising that has gripped parts of the nation.

He said a delegation would travel to Iraq on Thursday to survey the situation and to make attempts to contact local leaders.

Iran is a nation of mostly Shiite Muslims that has important links in Iraq, where Shiites account for about 60 percent of the population.

Meanwhile, three Japanese hostages kidnapped last week were released Thursday, the Japanese Foreign Ministry confirmed.

The Arabic-language network Al-Jazeera showed footage of the three. A Muslim cleric told the network the hostages were delivered to him.

The news comes as the Japanese government said it is investigating reports that two more of its citizens have been kidnapped in Iraq.

An Italian hostage who was one in a group of four Italians kidnapped in Iraq has been executed, the Italian government said Wednesday.

The kidnappers threatened to kill the remaining three Italian hostages if Rome does not withdraw its 2,700 troops from Iraq.

The office of Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi early Thursday said a top diplomat was being sent on an urgent mission to Iraq to try to secure the release of the remaining Italians.

Berlusconi also is refusing to back down.

"They have broken a life, they have not cracked our values and our desire for the peace," Berlusconi said in a statement.

Foreign Minister Franco Frattini first confirmed the execution early Thursday, telling state television that the Italian ambassador to Qatar viewed a portion of the videotaped execution and confirmed that the slain hostage was Fabrizio Quattrocchi, who was working in Iraq as a private security guard.

Al-Jazeera said it received the video of the execution Wednesday from a group claiming to be "The Mujahedeen Brigade." Al-Jazeera did not air the video because it was too graphic.

Insurgents have increasingly turned to abductions of foreign civilians in Iraq in an attempt to break the U.S.-led coalition. More than 40 hostages have been taken captive in recent days -- 32 of whom have been released.

The killing of the Italian man marked the first time a hostage has been confirmed to have been executed. Six others are believed to remain captive: the three other Italians, an American and two Arabs.

Authorities are continuing their efforts to identify four bodies found near Baghdad, according to U.S. State Department officials. The mutilated bodies were found on the outskirts of the capital, an official said.

A truck driver reported killed last Friday by hostile action in Iraq has been identified as Steven Fisher of Virginia Beach, Virginia, a spokeswoman for Halliburton confirmed late Wednesday.

The executed Italian hostage was identified as Fabrizio Quattrocchi.

Fisher worked for Kellogg, Brown and Root, a Halliburton subsidiary. On Friday, the company had reported that a KBR truck driver had been killed but did not identify him nor provide the circumstances of his death.

The company did not say whether Fisher's body was one of the four found near Baghdad, nor whether he was one of the six KBR employees unaccounted for after an attack on a fuel convoy near Baghdad on Friday.

A seventh KBR employee, Thomas Hamill of Macon, Mississippi, was taken hostage by armed men and has been shown alive on videotape. Two U.S. soldiers are also missing from the convoy attack.


MARINES: INSURGENTS USE AMBULANCES TO MOVE WEAPONS

Marines, trying to hold a shaky cease-fire in Fallujah while negotiations between Iraqi authorities and insurgents continue, said Thursday that "terrorist forces" have been using "ambulances to transport weapons."

The 1st Marine Division said Marines "witnessed an ambulance back up to a mosque inside Fallujah. Occupants from the vehicle subsequently carried weapons into the mosque. In a similar incident, another ambulance parked in front of a building and weapons were taken inside the structure."

Marines pointed out that "mosques, ambulances and hospitals are protected under Geneva Convention agreements and are not targeted by U.S. Marines" but will be targeted if they are used for hostile intent.

Ninety Americans have been killed in Iraq this month. The latest was a soldier killed Wednesday in a roadside bombing near Samarra. That brings the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq since the war began to 691.

With Iraq tense amid the ongoing insurgent violence, U.S. forces carried out a series of raids Wednesday, killing at least 16 enemy combatants and detaining more than 40 others suspected of anti-coalition activity in Al Anbar Province, the military said.

To the south, U.S. forces were massing outside Najaf, where Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr is holed up, surrounded by his militia. U.S. commanders have said they want to capture or kill al-Sadr, who is credited with inciting much of the current violence in Iraq. He is wanted by an Iraqi court in the killing of a rival cleric.

With the exception of Najaf, conditions in the southern cities where al-Sadr's militia faced coalition forces are "stable" and similar to those that existed before fighting began with his Mehdi Army, Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Thursday.

"This was not a Shiite uprising," Myers said, pointing to what he said were the small numbers of militia fighters. "This was not a popular resistance to the coalition."

A spokesman for al-Sadr said Wednesday the cleric would disarm his militia and drop his conditions for negotiating with the coalition if Iraq's top Shiite spiritual body approves.


GROUP WARNS OF BAGHDAD ATTACKS

The Al Mujahedeen Brigades has distributed a leaflet warning Baghdad residents to stay indoors for the next week, because the group plans to move its insurgency to the Iraqi capital.

The leaflet reads, "Our people in Baghdad, we are asking you to stay at home, do not go to the schools and universities, do not go to the markets. We are asking the owners of shops to close their shops from 15 April till 23 April because your brothers the Mujahedeen in Ramadi, Khalidiya and Fallujah will bring the fire of the resistance to the capital with the help of our brothers the Mujahedeen in Al-Mehdi Army to liberate you from the occupation. This is a warning."

Mehdi Army is the banned militia of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

The leaflet was distributed across Baghdad's various neighborhoods over the past week, until Wednesday. Baghdad mosques have called for a general strike this week, as well.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/04/15/iraq.main/index.html