Al-Qaeda in Iraq on Thursday threatened to kill five kidnapped employees of the Sudanese embassy in Baghdad within two days unless Khartoum removes its diplomatic mission from Iraq.
The group, which has kidnapped and killed a string of Arab diplomatic personnel this year, said in a statement on a Web forum where al-Qaeda in Iraqi frequently posts messages that it had snatched the five Sudanese, who it said included diplomats.
The claim could not be immediately confirmed. It included no photos of the five and did not identify them. The statement did not say when the Sudanese were kidnapped.
The Sudanese Foreign Ministry reported last Saturday that six of its embassy employees were kidnapped, including a diplomat -- the mission's second secretary, Abdel Moneam Mohammad Tom. It was not immediately clear if the al-Qaeda statement was referring to the same group.
Later on Thursday, the Qatar-based al-Jazeera satellite channel showed footage it said it had received from the kidnappers, showing the five Sudanese sitting on chairs and talking to the camera, but no audio could be heard. The videotape also showed ID documents from the Sudanese embassy, but the names could not be discerned.
Meanwhile, a Lebanese engineer was abducted on Thursday by gunmen, the Lebanese Foreign Ministry said. Camile Nassif Tannous, who works for the Schneider engineering firm, was kidnapped "in Iraq in the past few hours," the ministry said, giving no further details.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Tannous' kidnapping.
Al-Qaeda in Iraq set a deadline for today for Sudan to "announce clearly that it is cutting its relations" with the Iraqi government, and "is closing its embassy in Baghdad as well as withdrawing all of its representatives."
"Otherwise, this government will bear the responsibility of presenting their diplomats as sacrifices," the statement said.
The group said it had previously warned Arab nations of its "war against what is called the diplomatic missions in Baghdad," adding that the governments had ignored it, "still getting closer to the infidel Crusaders and Jews."
Al-Qaeda in Iraq has kidnapped and killed a string of Arab diplomats and embassy employees in a campaign to scare Arab governments from setting up full diplomatic missions in Iraq -- a step that is seen as a sign of support for the new Iraqi government.
In July, al-Qaeda abducted the top Egyptian envoy in Baghdad, Ihab al-Sherif, and two Algerian diplomats. It later announced they had been killed. The group also snatched two Moroccan embassy employees in June and said that it had sentenced them to death, though it never stated whether it carried out the sentences.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS