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Militant vows to assassinate Iraq premier
A recording purportedly made by the mastermind of bombings and beheadings in Iraq threatened to assassinate Iraq's interim prime minister and fight the Americans "until Islamic rule is back on Earth."
The audio, found Wednesday on an Islamic Web site, is supposedly from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the same Jordanian-born terrorist whose group claimed responsibility for the beheading of of American hostage Nicholas Berg and Kim Sun-il, a South Korean whose decapitated body was found Tuesday evening between Baghdad and Fallujah.
South Koreans reacted with sorrow and anger to Kim's beheading Wednesday, with President Roh Moo-hyun calling it a "crime against humanity."
After the slaying, U.S. forces launched an airstrike on what the Americans said was an al-Zarqawi hideout in Fallujah. Three people were killed and nine wounded, said Dr. Loai Ali Zeidan at Fallujah Hospital. It was the second U.S. airstrike on Fallujah since Saturday.
Kim's body was found two days after he appeared on a videotape broadcast by Al-Jazeera television, pleading "I don't want to die" and begging his government to pull its soldiers out of Iraq. South Korea refused and said it would go ahead with plans to send another 3,000 troops here by August.
In the audiotape, the speaker thought to be al-Zarqawi told Iraq's interim prime minister, Iyad Allawi, that "we will continue the game with you until the end." The speaker said "we will not get bored" until "we make you drink from the same glass" as Izzadine Saleem, the Iraqi governing Council president killed last month in a car-bombing claimed at al-Zarqawi's group.
"We will carry on our jihad against the Western infidel and the Arab apostate until Islamic rule is back on earth," the voice said.
An official with Allawi's office dismissed the threat, saying it would not derail the transfer of sovereignty next week.
Elsewhere, a roadside bomb exploded near Baghdad's Kindi Hospital on Wednesday, killing a policeman, a mother and her child, police said. The woman and child were riding in the taxi, said Col. Khubur Saleh of the Iraqi police. The policeman was killed while handling the bomb, another police officer at the scene said.
Another man, his shirt off, was seen being led away in handcuffs.
In Ramadi, an insurgent stronghold 60 miles west of Baghdad, gunmen killed two policemen and wounded a third in a drive-by shooting, witnesses said.
Two American soldiers were killed Tuesday and another was wounded in an attack on a convoy near Balad, 50 miles north of Baghdad. The dean of the University of Mosul law school was murdered in another attack against the country's intellectual elite. Gunmen also killed two Iraqi women working as translators for British forces in Basra, Iraqi officials said.
The beheading of Kim, 33, who worked for a South Korean company providing supplies to U.S. forces, stunned South Korea and prompted the Seoul government to order all non-essential civilians to leave Iraq as soon as possible.
South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun, addressing the nation on television Wednesday, condemned Kim's slaying.
"When we think of his desperate appeals for life, our hearts are wrenched with grief," Roh said.
He rejected the kidnappers' claim that the 3,000 new troops his government is sending would pose a threat to Iraqis.
Late Tuesday, the Arabic language satellite television channel Al-Jazeera broadcast a videotape of a terrified Kim kneeling, blindfolded and wearing an orange jumpsuit similar to those issued to prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Kim's shoulders were heaving, his mouth open and moving as if he were gulping air and sobbing. Five hooded and armed men stood behind him, one with a big knife slipped in his belt. One of the masked men read a statement addressed to the Korean people: "This is what your hands have committed. Your army has not come here for the sake of Iraqis, but for cursed America." South Korea is a U.S. ally in Iraq. Al-Jazeera did not show the actual beheading, saying it was too graphic. American troops found Kim's body between Baghdad and Fallujah about 5:20 p.m. Iraq time, South Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman Shin Bong-kil said. The body was identified by a photograph sent by e-mail to the South Korean embassy. The killing and kidnapping was claimed by Al-Zarqawi's group, Monotheism and Jihad. The grisly killing was reminiscent of the decapitation of Berg and of American helicopter technician Paul M. Johnson Jr., 49, who was beheaded by al-Qaida militants in Saudi Arabia. An al-Qaida group claiming responsibility posted an Internet message that showed photographs of Johnson's severed head. President Bush condemned the beheading of Kim as "barbaric" and said he remained confident that South Korea would go ahead with plans to send the troops to Iraq. South Korea will be the third-largest troop contributor after the United States and Britain. "The free world cannot be intimidated by the brutal actions of these barbaric people," the president said.
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