Hostage-takers threaten to kill 2 Pakistanis

People gather behind the wreckage of a car bomb that detonated close to the Sarafia bridge over the Tigris River in Baghdad yesterday wounding two people but causing no deaths. PHOTO: AFP

Video footage was shown of the Pakistanis' identity cards, which carried their photographs and named them as Azad Hussein Khan and Sajjad Naeem.

"One of the two Pakistanis works as a technician for the American forces and the second is a driver for these forces," said the statement, adding that after investigation, "it was decided to execute the two" Pakistanis.

A date was not given for the threatened execution.

The statement said an Iraqi had also been kidnapped, and like the two Pakistanis, worked for a Kuwaiti company.

Early on Sunday, Islamabad said two Pakistanis working in Iraq had gone missing and were believed to have been kidnapped.

Reuters adds: A militant Islamic group holding seven foreigners hostage in Iraq said it had extended the deadline for negotiations to spare their lives and repeated a demand that their Kuwaiti employer pull out of the country.

The hostages -- three Indians, three Kenyans and an Egyptian, all truck drivers for a Kuwaiti firm -- were seized last week by a little-known group calling itself the "Black Banners" brigade of the Islamic Secret Army.

In a video tape released to news organisations yesterday, a masked member of the group read a statement as two armed and masked men stood at his side, behind the kneeling hostages, who were dressed in white smocks.

Moreover, families of three Indians being held hostage in Iraq along with four other truck drivers cheered Monday on receiving news that the captors had stayed their threat to start killing the men one by one.

"This is good news. Very good news. The entire village prayed today and we shall continue," said Ram Dass, grand uncle of hostage Antaryami, who uses one name.

Dass, speaking to AFP by telephone from his village of Dehlon, some 430km north of New Delhi, acknowledged the efforts of the Indian government to free the truckers.

"We have no complaints with the Indian government. They are trying their best," Dass said, adding however, "but let us also not make irresponsible comments."

Ram Dass said he had just one appeal to make: "Please release our boys. We want nothing else. We are also appealing to our god."

The parents of another hostage, Sukhdev Singh, were too weak from the trauma to attend a telephone call but the 26-year-old trucker's aunt, Bibi Jimer Kaur exploded with joy.