Three hostages 'butchered'

2004-06-12 23:10

Baghdad - The butchered bodies of a young Lebanese man working in Iraq and two Iraqi colleagues were found on Friday on a road near the flashpoint town of Fallujah, a diplomat said Saturday.

Their throats had been cut, charge d'affaires Hassan Hijazi said. It was the first deadly attack on a Lebanese national in Iraq.

"Hussein Olayyan, 26, from south Lebanon, and two Iraqis working for a telecommunications company disappeared on Thursday near Fallujah," the diplomat said.

The Lebanese company, which had a contract with the Iraqi government, asked the embassy to investigate.

"On Friday at noon (08:00 GMT), some drivers found their bodies brutally mutilated on the roadside between Baghdad and Jordan Their throats were slit," Hijazi said. "They found their identity papers and called the embassy."

The diplomat said Olayyan's body would be repatriated on Sunday.

A photographer who visited the morgue confirmed that the three men had had their throats slashed.

slew of murders

The killings were the latest in a slew of murders of foreign contractors. Four security contractors, two Americans and two Poles, were gunned down on the road to Baghdad airport last Sunday.

"Until now the Lebanese community has never been the target of an attack," the diplomat exclaimed. "There has been abductions, but it has been for money. This time there was not even a ransom demand."

Lebanese engineer Roger Haddad was kidnapped on May 31 in Baghdad and set free just over a week later after his family paid a ransom, the diplomat said.

Two other Lebanese nationals have been arrested by the US-led forces and are being held inside the notorious Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad.

In Beirut, the Lebanese foreign ministry confirmed that one Lebanese working in Iraq had been killed by armed men, two others had been kidnapped and two arrested by Iraqi authorities.

According to the diplomat, Iraq's Lebanese community is divided into two groups: 300 to 350 people who have lived in the country for a long time and another 150, most of them businessmen, who have moved here since the fall of Saddam Hussein.

Meanwhile, seven Turkish construction workers kidnapped in Iraq earlier in the week have been released and are on their way home, the Turkish embassy in Baghdad said on Saturday.

"We received a statement from their employer, a construction firm called Serka, that said the seven had been released and are travelling back to Turkey," an official told AFP.

A wave of kidnappings swept Iraq in early April as the US military attacked rebels in Fallujah and Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr's militia revolted in central and southern Iraq.

At one point, 40 foreigners of 12 different nationalities had gone missing.

An Anglican cleric, Canon Andrew White, who is working to help secure the release of foreign hostages, said on Tuesday that about 17 hostages were still being held in Iraq.

Some hostages may have been sold to Islamic militant groups, he warned.

- AFP