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Journalist who condemned war kidnapped Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
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Bombs hit sealed off Baghdad ahead of vote result
Reuters
Jan 20, 2006 — By Alastair Macdonald
BAGHDAD - Four bombs hit security patrols in Baghdad on Friday as the city was all but sealed off ahead of the announcement of final election results and forces hunted kidnappers who are threatening to kill an American journalist.
Two civilians were killed by a roadside bomb targeting a U.S. patrol and police reported three other explosions after they blocked off roads between Baghdad and the restive provinces of Anbar, Salahaddin and Diyala, heartlands of Sunni Arab rebels who say the Shi'ite-led government cheated in last month's vote.
Many Sunni leaders are already discussing places in a coalition government, however, and the publication of results at 3 p.m. (1200 GMT) will pave the way for full-scale negotiations with the dominant Shi'ite Islamists and Kurdish leaders.
The U.S. ambassador joined calls for Iraq's sectarian and ethnic communities to come together after the results to form a government of national unity; Washington hopes consensus can staunch the bloodshed and let it bring U.S. troops home.
Iraqi defense sources said U.S. troops were raiding houses in southern Baghdad; it was not clear if there was any link to previous raids in the hunt for American reporter Jill Carroll.
As her captors' deadline neared, with U.S. forces rejecting their demand that women prisoners be freed, influential Sunni leaders joined Carroll's family in urging her release.
After heavy media coverage in the United States, Sunni leader Adnan Dulaimi called for the release of 28-year-old Carroll by kidnappers who set a 72-hour ultimatum for the U.S. military to free women prisoners in Iraq when they issued a videotape on Tuesday showing the captive journalist.
KIDNAP PLEAS
"Release this journalist who strived for Iraq, defended Iraqis and condemned the war in Iraq," Dulaimi, whose office Carroll had just left when she was kidnapped on January 7, told a news conference. Her translator was killed in the ambush.
"The kidnapping of this woman is an insult to me," Dulaimi said. "I am making every effort to release Iraqi women detainees and this kidnapping will obstruct my efforts."
In Cairo, the influential Muslim Brotherhood also issued a public call for the journalist to be freed.
U.S. officials insist there are no plans to release women, despite remarks to the contrary by the Iraqi Justice Ministry.
The reporter's father, Jim Carroll, addressed her captors on Al Jazeera television: "I want to speak directly to the kidnappers of my daughter Jill, who could be fathers like me.
"My daughter has no influence, she doesn't have the power to free anyone ... Use her as a reporter to support your cause."
ELECTION RESULTS
Results of the election will show domination by the Shi'ite Alliance, which has fallen 10 seats short of retaining its narrow majority, a source in the Electoral Commission said.
Sunni Arabs, dominant under Saddam Hussein, will take just over a fifth of the 275 seats in a parliament they boycotted when it was first formed a year ago; that outcome has already fueled Sunni complaints of massive vote fraud and threats of violence after an informal insurgent ceasefire during the vote.
International monitors brought in to address the Sunni complaints two weeks ago gave the election process a mostly clean bill of health in a report on Thursday, clearing the way for the results to be released. Parties will have a further two days to appeal before they are certified as definitive.
Sunni politicians branded the report a whitewash written under U.S. pressure, and bombers have broken through a heavy security clampdown prompted by fears of a spike in violence when the results are finally published.
Insurgents killed at least 22 people in two simultaneous bomb blasts in central Baghdad on Thursday.
Police north of the capital fear as many as 34 recruits may have been killed on Tuesday after gunmen ambushed a bus. A wounded survivor said 14 were certainly shot dead in a well. Police said they had found seven bodies in the area so far.
"We expect Zarqawi and foreign fighters to strike again after the election results," U.S. Major General Rick Lynch said on Thursday of al Qaeda in Iraq's leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Although some rebels supported the election, Sunni Islamist militants have no time for the voting.
There was no word on the fate of Carroll or other foreign hostages, among thousands of people abducted for money or political goals since the U.S. invasion of 2003.
Four peace activists, two Canadians, an American and a Briton have been missing since November. Two Kenyan telephone engineers were snatched in Baghdad on Wednesday when their armed convoy was all but massacred in an elaborate ambush.
(Additional reporting by Ross Colvin, Ahmed Rasheed, Michael Georgy and Mariam Karouny in Baghdad and Abdel-Razzak Hameed in Basra)
Copyright 2006 Reuters News Service. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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