U.S. Hostage Pleads For Life
Al-Jazeera satellite television broadcast
Wednesday of a kidnapped American held at gunpoint and pleading for his life.The U.S. Embassy said the man on the tape appeared to be Jeffrey Ake, a contract worker from Indiana who was taken hostage by an unidentified group Monday while working on a water treatment plant near Baghdad. Ake, 47, is president and CEO of Equipment Express, whose products include machines that fill water bottles.
In Ake's hometown of LaPorte, Ind., a yellow ribbon was tied around a tree outside his one-story brick house, and an American flag fluttered on a pole from the home.
The Al-Jazeera tape showed a man sitting behind a desk with at least three assailants – two hooded and one off-camera – pointing assault rifles at him. The man was sitting or kneeling behind a wooden desk and holding what appeared to be a photo and a passport.
The station didn't air the tape's audio, but said the man pleaded for his life and urged U.S. troops to withdraw from Iraq.
White House press secretary Scott McClellan said there would be no negotiating with the kidnappers.
"Anytime there is a hostage — an American hostage, it is a high priority for the United States," he said. "Our position is well known when it comes to negotiating. Obviously this is a sensitive matter."
More than 200 foreigners have been taken captive in Iraq in the past year, and more than 30 have been killed, including at least three Americans.
In other developments:
Al Qaeda in Iraq said in an Internet statement that it carried out the deadly car bomb in Baghdad, which the military said damaged two SUVs and five cars. The explosion left charred and burning cars on the dangerous road to Baghdad's airport.
"A member of our martyrdom seekers' brigade mingled in an American military convoy at the airport road and exploded himself, destroying the infidels," al Qaeda in Iraq said in an Internet statement. The statement could not be independently verified.
The car bomb was among four explosions that rocked central Baghdad early Wednesday, the military said. The second was a car bomb that didn't cause any damage, and the third was a "secondary explosion" nearby, the military said.
The military gave no information on the fourth explosion, but twin blasts exploded near a convoy of two U.S. Humvees and a fuel tanker as it made its way through an eastern Baghdad neighborhood, witnesses said. The burning truck sent up a large plume of black smoke visible across the city.
Near Kirkuk, 12 policemen gathered to help dismantle an apparent decoy bomb were killed by another explosion Wednesday, police said. Three others were injured.
Police Brig. Sarhat Qadir said the explosion occurred 10 miles northwest of Kirkuk as police were trying to cordon off the area. He said officials believed the bomb being dismantled was a decoy to draw in more police before the second bomb exploded.
The violence came as Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick arrived in the war-battered capital Wednesday on a one-day visit following a trip to Iraq by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Tuesday.
"Dimensions of our Iraqi strategy have to have political and economic — complete reconstruction — components as well as a military component," Zoellick said Tuesday while traveling to the Middle East.
His trip, like Rumsfeld's, was kept secret for security reasons.
On Tuesday, U.S. troops battled arms smugglers and fighters near the Iraqi town of Qaim along the Syrian border, killing nine insurgents, the U.S. military said. No Americans were injured, it said.
Hamid al-Alousi, director of Qaim hospital, said his facility received nine corpses and nearly two dozen wounded, all believed to be civilians. Residents of a small village just north of Qaim said more than a dozen people were buried in the area and not taken to the hospital.
It was impossible to verify the claims.
Without providing details, the group al Qaeda in Iraq, led by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, claimed responsibility for the Qaim clashes. The claim, posted on the Internet, could not be verified.
U.S. military officials said that two other raids in the area over the last week had resulted in the capture of smugglers who "confessed to bringing weapons, foreign fighters and money for terrorists across the Syrian border into Iraq."