[Shadow_Group] Fw: Gunmen Kidnap Three Members of Allawi's Family

[shadowgroup-l at lists.resist.ca]

        Go to Original<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38793-2004Nov10.html>

        Gunmen Kidnap Three Members of Allawi's Family
        By Karl Vick, Jackie Spinner and Fred Barbash
        The Washington Post

        Thursday 11 November 2004

        U.S. controls 70 percent of Fallujah, military says.

        BAGHDAD - Gunmen kidnapped a first cousin of interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi and two other members of his extended family from their Baghdad home on Tuesday, an Allawi spokesman said Wednesday morning. A militant Islamist group said Wednesday it would execute Allawi's relatives unless U.S. and Iraqi forces withdraw from Fallujah.

        In Fallujah, meanwhile, the U.S. military claimed control of 70 percent of the rebellious city as fighting entered its third full day. Resistance was reported heavy in places and non-existent in others.

        Allawi spokesman Georges Sada said in a telephone interview that Allawi's "cousin, his [cousin's] wife and another relative were kidnapped Tuesday night from their home after a little shooting between their bodyguards and the terrorists." Another Allawi spokesman, Thaer Hasan Naqip identified the kidnapped cousin as Ghazi Allawi, 75. He said Allawi, his wife and his son were kidnapped in Baghdad's Yarmouk neighborhood.

        Sada said early in the day that no group had taken responsibility for the abduction, and neither the Allawi family nor the interim government had been contacted by the kidnappers.

        "Not until now," Sada said. "No communication."

        Later, however, the Reuters news service reported from Dubai that an Islamist group, Ansar al-Jihad, was claiming responsibility on an Internet site, threatening to kill the relatives in 48 hours unless the raid on Fallujah was halted and prisoners set free. The authenticity of the claim could not be verified.

        ''This action is another of the terrorists' crimes and will not weaken the will of the government to fight terrorism to achieve peace and stability in a free and democratic Iraq," said Naqip.

        Kidnapping for ransom has skyrocketed in the capital since the collapse of civil order that followed the April 2003 toppling of the government headed by Saddam Hussein. Some wealthier families have hired bodyguards to walk children to and from school.

        But the abduction of Allawi's kin was immediately assumed to be politically motivated.

        More than 170 foreigners have been taken in Iraq since April, when kidnapping emerged as a tool of insurgents looking for leverage against members of the military coalition led by the United States.

        Some three dozen of the captives have subsequently been executed or never found. In recent weeks, assassinations of members of Iraq's interim government have skyrocketed. The threat extends from ministers, who typically travel with security details, to office support personnel, who have been massacred in carpools on the way to work.

        Insurgent activity across Iraq appears to have intensified since the attack on Fallujah. U.S. and Iraqi forces launched the massive assault three days ago in an attempt to suppress Sunni Muslim insurgent activity, including kidnappings, orchestrated in the city.

        Fighting has been reported intense in some places and surprisingly light in others. In a statement Wednesday, the military said U.S. and Iraqi forces had "fought their way" into the "epicenter of insurgent activity in the city," the Jolan neighborhood, encountering light resistance from small pockets of fighters along the way.

        The statement said the "multinational" force had retaken key civic buildings, including Fallujah's mayoral office, which had been under the control of insurgents. Iraqi brigades and U.S. Marines, the statement said, have seized two important mosques, the Hydra Mosque and the Al Tawfiq Mosque, previously used for refuge by insurgents.

        "We have no information" about "civilians being hurt and we have no reports of anyone trying to get out of the city," the military statement added. Reports from field commanders, the military said, confirmed that U.S. forces suffered 11 casualties Wednesday while Iraqi forces suffered 11. It did not say whether the casualties were deaths or injuries.

        Tuesday, the military claimed at least 71 insurgents had been killed so far while 10 U.S. troops and two members of the Iraqi security force had been killed.

        Maj. Francis Piccoli, of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, said fighting overnight was "light to moderate" and U.S. casualties were "extremely light." He told embedded reporters that U.S. forces had pushed south through Fallujah's central highway and control 70 percent of the city.

        "The heart of the city is what's in focus now," he said.

        Meanwhile, insurgents inside the city told reporters they launched a counterattack on U.S. forces at 9:30 p.m. Tuesday. They said dozens of insurgents were killed in the ensuing battle, which lasted six hours. The insurgents fell back.

        Abdullah Janabi, president of the Shura Council, the committee of insurgent leaders and clerics that has governed Fallujah since April, told reporters that the insurgents realized they could not fight the U.S. forces "in the open. . . . The council's military adviser," he said, "put forward the plan to withdraw from the outskirts of the Jolan and other neighborhoods, and pull the US forces inside.

        "In the open area we will lose," Janabi said. "We cannot fight them in an open area. We dragged them to the narrow alleys. This afternoon is the final battle."

        At a news conference in Baghdad Tuesday, Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz, the commander of foreign military operations in Iraq, said the assault on Fallujah had so far "achieved our objectives on or ahead of schedule." He added, "I think we're looking at several more days of tough urban fighting."

        The general said the battle plan as a whole was on course. "We felt like the enemy would form an outer crust in defense of Fallujah. We broke through that pretty quickly and easily," Metz said. "We also then anticipated him breaking up into small three- to six-person detachments or squads, which we've seen throughout the day, today especially."

        Metz said that because U.S. forces formed a "very tight" cordon around the city Sunday night, the enemy "doesn't have an escape route" and eventually would be cornered.

        In a combat death unrelated to Fallujah, a soldier from the Army's 1st Infantry Division was killed when a roadside bomb detonated beside a patrol outside Balad, site of a sprawling U.S. base north of Baghdad, the military announced Wednesday.



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