Egypt confirms murder of envoy
2005-07-07 20:26
Cairo - Egypt's ambassador-designate to Iraq Ihab al-Sharif, abducted in Baghdad at the weekend, has been murdered, the office of the Egyptian president confirmed on Thursday.
"The Egyptian presidency expresses its regret over the death of the head of its diplomatic mission in Baghdad, one of its faithful sons and a martyr of Egyptian diplomacy, who lost his life by the hand of terror that exploits Islam and neither knows fatherland nor faith," it said in a statement quoted by the official Mena agency.
The group of al-Qaeda's Iraq frontman Abu Musab al-Zarqawi said on Thursday in a website statement it had executed Sharif, who had been due in the next days to formally present his credentials as Egyptian ambassador to Iraq.
- SAPA