'Foreigner' beheaded in Iraq

2004-12-17 16:54

Mosul - Four people were hauled from their car by masked men in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Friday and killed, witnesses said, adding that one of them may have been a non-Iraqi.

"I was parked in the Yarmuk district when I saw men in two cars attack a taxi from Baghdad," Abdallah Zibeidi, 45, told AFP.

"After taking them out of the vehicle, the attackers shot three men dead and decapitated the fourth," he said, adding that the attack happened at 13:45 (10:45 GMT).

"I saw the decapitation with my own eyes," he said, and that "the man who was decapitated spoke a foreign language."

Another witness, Qoteiba Mohammed, said that he heard the taxi driver shouting "I'm an Iraqi, from Baghdad, don't shoot."

"The men then fired and I saw one of the men decapitated."

Over 60 bodies have been found in Mosul, 370km north of the capital, since the beginning of December, many of them belonging to members of Iraqi security forces executed by insurgents.

- AFP