Hostage 'slaughter houses' found

2004-11-10 17:47

Near Fallujah - Iraqi troops found homes where foreign hostages were held and slaughtered in Fallujah, said Major General Abdul Qader Mohan, chief military spokesperson for the joint US-Iraqi operation in the rebel city.

"We have found hostage slaughter houses in Fallujah that were used by these people (kidnappers) and the black clothing that they used to wear to identify themselves.

"Also hundreds of CDs (compact discs) and whole records with names," he told reporters at a military base near the rebel city.

In a familiar pattern, taped footage of the hostage in the company of black-masked men would be sent to Arab satellite channels like Al-Jazeera with a message threatening to kill, usually behead, the hostage unless certain political demands were met.

He said the homes were in the northern sector of the city.

Asked if the hostage records included the names of British aid director Margaret Hassan, French journalists Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot or any other hostages still missing in Iraq, the general said: "I did not look closely."

Mohan said many of the homes also served as hideouts for Arab militants and depots for arms supplied by foreign countries.

"We also found huge amounts of weapons and records detailing which country had offered it as a gift," he said as he pointed to an aerial map of the city.

The commander said records were also found with the names and identities of foreign fighters killed in the intensive campaign of air strikes by the US military since April on suspected rebel positions in the city.

"We found records saying that such-and-such immigrant a Sudanese, a Moroccan or other were killed in such-and-such air strike." Both the Iraqi and US governments have charged that Fallujah was a staging ground for militants like Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the alleged front man for al-Qaeda in Iraq and accused of some of the worst attacks and a slew of kidnappings and beheadings.

- AFP