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Iraq

Kidnappers threaten Germans

BAGHDAD - A roadside bomb killed a British soldier in southern Iraq Tuesday as a new video from kidnappers threatened to kill two German hostages if Germany fails to stop cooperating with the Iraqi government.

British Cpl. Gordon Alexander Pritchard, 31, was killed Tuesday as he led a three-vehicle convoy hit by a roadside bomb in Umm Qasr, near the border with Kuwait.

In a series of apparent sectarian killings, police found the bodies of 16 handcuffed and blindfolded young men around Baghdad, and gunmen shot dead the wife and two sons of Sunni Arab cleric Qassim Daham al-Hamdani in Muqdadiyah, about 60 miles north of Baghdad.

Kidnappers threatened to kill Thomas Nitzschke and Rene Braeunlich if Germany does not close its embassy in Iraq, withdraw all the German companies from Iraq and stop cooperating with the Iraqi government within three days.

The videotape aired on Al-Jazeera television showed Braeunlich speaking and clasping his hands in front of him as if begging. No audio was heard.

The two men were abducted last week in the northern industrial city of Beiji.

The video came a day after Jill Carroll, a 28-year-old freelancer for the Christian Science Monitor who is also held hostage, appeared veiled and weeping in footage on Al-Jazeera.

U.S. officials said they have ruled out meeting the kidnappers' demand to release all Iraqi women in detention.

Reporters Without Borders, an international journalist advocacy group, said it would send representatives to the Middle East to promote a campaign in the Arab media for the release of Carroll, who was seized in Baghdad on Jan. 7.

The father of a kidnapped Canadian Christian activist urged the release of his son and three colleagues.

"I appeal for the captors of my son and his three friends to release them unharmed," Dalip Singh Sooden said on Al-Jazeera on Tuesday. His son, 32-year-old Harmeet Singh Sooden, was seized Nov. 26 in Baghdad.

Japan's Kyodo News agency said Tokyo will begin withdrawing troops from Iraq in March and complete the pullout by May, ending its largest military mission since World War II. Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso denied the report, saying no specific timetable had been discussed.

WOUNDED JOURNALISTS IN U.S.: Wounded ABC anchor Bob Woodruff and cameraman Doug Vogt arrived in the United States on Tuesday for treatment at a Navy hospital in Maryland. They were airlifted from the U.S. military base in Ramstein, Germany.

They were among 30 patients on a C-17 military evacuation plane that arrived at Andrews Air Force Base. Woodruff, Vogt and three other patients were put on a bus for National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda. The other patients were taken to the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington.

Jeffrey Schneider, vice president of ABC News, said outside the hospital that the network considered but rejected the idea of sending Woodruff and Vogt to a private hospital.

"We talked to all the military people and determined that this is the best place in the world to treat those kind of injuries," he said. Schneider added that ABC is paying for its employees' treatment. "The cost will not fall on the American taxpayer," he said.

HUSSEIN LAWYERS STATE CONDITIONS: Saddam Hussein's defense lawyers are demanding that the new chief judge be removed before they will end their boycott of the trial, which resumes today after a stormy session where the former president was tossed out.

Khalil al-Dulaimi and Khamis al-Obeidi said they have written to the Iraqi high tribunal to demand that Raouf Rasheed Abdel-Rahman, who was named chief judge last week, be removed from the trial and any other legal proceedings against Hussein. Al-Dulaimi also said Hussein would boycott the trial today. Chief prosecutor Jaafar al-Mousawi said Hussein and the seven other defendants would be brought to the court by force if necessary.

[Last modified February 1, 2006, 01:04:14]