Turkish hostages shot dead
2004-08-27 22:07
Doha - The bodies of two Turkish hostages shot dead have been found in Baiji in northern Iraq, Al-Jazeera television said on Friday night in a news flash.
Quoting its own unspecified sources, the Qatar-based satellite news channel said "the bodies of two Turkish hostages executed by gunfire have been found in Baiji", a key refinery town in the Sunni Muslim belt that stretches north and west from the Iraqi capital.
It did not give further details.
The reported execution of the two Turks comes just a day after the killing of kidnapped Italian journalist Enzo Baldoni.
Turkey's NTV news channel on Wednesday aired footage of two Turks, Abdullah Ozdemir and Ali Daskin, both engineers kidnapped from their worksite at an unidentified location in Iraq.
The video showed armed militants threatening to execute them unless their company withdrew from Iraq within 72 hours.
Blindfolded and shot three times
Turkey's Anatolia news agency later reported the pair's employer had announced it was ending operations in Iraq.
The abduction of the two engineers brought to at least six the number of Turks known to be in captivity in Iraq.
Several Turkish men, mostly truck drivers, have been kidnapped in the war-torn country and then released.
But one Turkish hostage was shown on a video posted on Islamist websites on August 2 being blindfolded and shot three times in the head by his hooded captors.
- AFP