Killings amid Iraq talks

BAGHDAD – French envoys held crisis talks with Muslim clerics in Iraq yesterday in a desperate bid to free two kidnapped journalists as a militant group released a video purportedly showing the killing of three Turkish hostages and warning foreigners to leave the country.

Representatives of the French Council for the Muslim Faith, which serves as a link to president Jacques Chirac, met with leaders of an influential Sunni clerical organisation with alleged ties to insurgents at a Baghdad mosque and urged them to intervene. “Journalists have never been enemies of any people,” said Abdallah Zekri, a French council official.”Free them.But free them while we are here.Their families are suffering, their children are in pain.”A militant group calling itself “The Islamic Army of Iraq” said it had kidnapped veteran French reporters, Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot, and was demanding France lift its ban on Islamic headscarves in public schools.Muslim leaders in France, who have largely opposed the law but denounced the hostage-taking, urged calm as millions of French students opened the school year yesterday with the new law in effect.It was not immediately clear whether any girls defied the law by wearing head scarves.The station said it had a statement claiming responsibility from Tawhid and Jihad, a group linked to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant held responsible for a string of bombings, kidnappings and other attacks in Iraq.The station broadcast only part of the video, but not the footage showing the killings.It did not say how the three were killed.The brief segment broadcast showed three men sitting on the floor with three masked men, two of them armed, standing behind them.One of the masked men read a statement.”The time of forgiveness has gone.You have nothing left but killing and beheading,” said the brief printed Arabic statement, which Al-Jazeera showed on its screen.The video coincided with the discovery by Iraqi police of the bodies of two Turkish citizens and an unidentified man at a rural farm in northern Iraq.It could not be immediately confirmed whether the bodies belonged to the men in the video.Police said they were only able to identify two of the men, Majeed Mohammed and Yahya Qadir, both of Turkish nationality.Nampa-AP”Journalists have never been enemies of any people,” said Abdallah Zekri, a French council official.”Free them.But free them while we are here.Their families are suffering, their children are in pain.”A militant group calling itself “The Islamic Army of Iraq” said it had kidnapped veteran French reporters, Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot, and was demanding France lift its ban on Islamic headscarves in public schools.Muslim leaders in France, who have largely opposed the law but denounced the hostage-taking, urged calm as millions of French students opened the school year yesterday with the new law in effect.It was not immediately clear whether any girls defied the law by wearing head scarves.The station said it had a statement claiming responsibility from Tawhid and Jihad, a group linked to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant held responsible for a string of bombings, kidnappings and other attacks in Iraq.The station broadcast only part of the video, but not the footage showing the killings.It did not say how the three were killed.The brief segment broadcast showed three men sitting on the floor with three masked men, two of them armed, standing behind them.One of the masked men read a statement.”The time of forgiveness has gone.You have nothing left but killing and beheading,” said the brief printed Arabic statement, which Al-Jazeera showed on its screen.The video coincided with the discovery by Iraqi police of the bodies of two Turkish citizens and an unidentified man at a rural farm in northern Iraq.It could not be immediately confirmed whether the bodies belonged to the men in the video.Police said they were only able to identify two of the men, Majeed Mohammed and Yahya Qadir, both of Turkish nationality. Nampa-AP