Japanese TV reporting on the hostage crisis (AFP)
From The Australian, with thanks to Nicolei:
IRAQI insurgents late last night reneged on an agreement to free three Japanese civilian hostages, threatening to start killing them today unless Japan withdraws its troops.The threat to kill the first of the hostages within 24 hours was delivered through an Iraqi mediator and followed hours of conflicting reports about the release of the photographer and two volunteer workers.
The captors were "giving the Japanese Government a 24-hour ultimatum, not open to extension, after which they will execute a first," Mezher al-Delaimi told Al-Jazeera TV.
"The death sentence will be applied to the others 12 hours later" unless Tokyo pulled its troops out of Iraq.
They had been expected to be freed at about 1pm AEST yesterday, after the withdrawal of earlier threats that they would be burnt alive if Japan did not pull out of the coalition force in Iraq.
The kidnappers, who identified themselves as the "Mujaheddin Squadron", had said they had been convinced by Sunni clerics to release their captives unharmed. Angry demonstrations took place outside Japan's parliament yesterday, demanding that the kidnappers' demands be met.
The fate of US security guard Thomas Hamill, 43, was also unclear, after his captors promised he would meet a worse fate than the four American civilians killed in Fallujah on March 31, whose bodies were burned and mutilated by a mob, unless US forces ended their assault on the city "within 12 hours".
That deadline passed shortly before a fragile ceasefire in the city was called last night in the tinderbox city west of Baghdad. Shortly after the US-brokered 12-hour pause took effect in Fallujah, however, an Apache attack helicopter was shot down and its two-man crew killed in Baghdad, two US Marines were wounded by snipers and an armed Iraqi was shot dead.
Two bloodied bodies shown on Al-Jazeera lying by a road, surrounded by Iraqis, were said to be those of murdered Americans.
A group calling itself the "Martyr Ahmed Yassin Brigades" claimed to have captured 30 hostages in Ramadi, west of Fallujah.
The statement, aired on Al-Arabiya television, showed no images of captives and there was no way to verify the group's claim to be holding "Japanese, Bulgarians, Americans, Israelis, Spanish and Koreans, a total of 30 individuals".
"If the siege of Fallujah is not lifted, we will cut off their heads," says a masked man on the videotape. He also says his fighters killed four American soldiers and "we have their bodies".
The tape shows an image of a body with bloodied khaki pants partially covered by a blanket.
Two members of Germany's crack GSG-9 security police were missing, presumed dead, after being caught in a firefight near Fallujah last week.
Defence Minister Robert Hill acknowledged the "dangerous" situation in Iraq, saying he was surprised at how bad things were a year after Saddam Hussein's fall. "I didn't think it would be as bad as this," Senator Hill told the Nine Network. "I thought that by now there would be an Iraqi leadership coming forward and Iraqi people taking greater control over a destiny that would have been a better destiny for themselves."
Gosh! Muslims not keeping their word! Caveat emptor
It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace--but there is no peace. The war is actually begun!
Cry Havoc! and let loose the dogs of war.
Islamo-fascists demand appeasement, as their "sacred right", out of every corner of the Earth.
Tokyo's being blackmailed to comply and it could well concede to the terrorists' demands, fancying that it may thus avoid further trouble.
Pathetic folly!
As Trotsky said: "You might not be interested in war, but war is interested in you".
These people in iraq know little of the asian thought process. Do they not know that to sacrife a few lives is nothing for them, that the japanese did not surrednder after losing 100,000 plus on a single day, that to make the modern China state that Mao was ok with the murder of over 20 million of his own people. this threat in true essence is not going to change their mindset. it would be most unwise of the islamist to start a war with the east as well as the west, for they are more ruthless and much more thorough in eliminating their enimies than modern western societies.it is a gamble that i wouldnt take but who is to say these illiterate people know of any culture than their own.
Some may disagree, but I feel that the time has come to stop playing nice, and start dusting the region.
We've been far too kind, for far too long.
I say if they burn the hostages alive we bring in napalm and take out all of Fallujah. These terrorists are desperste because they know they hav already lost.
Sorry for the typos. Sticking keyboard. Should be "desperate" and "have".
Napalm? Carpet-bombing? - So-o-o 20th Century! That approach would merely let the commentariat accuse the US of a "brutal 'neo-Dresden'"!
No. This is the window for the true "shock-&-awe" (not the ante-climax of a year ago), to demonstrate, unambiguously, that the gloves are off, no more "Mr Niceguy".
The Arabs' record of honouring cease-fires is extremely poor (to say the least) - these in Iraq can't be expected to endure for long. Once they inevitably break down in madness and mayhem, then the Coalition will be confronting the identical, grim task that it faced a week back, pacifying Iraq (and beyond) properly.
The difference'll be that now the terrorists and their accomplices will be greatly emboldened, conceiving that - via the craven international reaction to their insurrections - they've managed to politically and "morally" constrain Allied military options, tying one arm behind America's back (like they've already done with the Israelis).
When the Marines have to go back into Faluja and other centres, they'll find that they've been rigged like the Palestinians "fixed" Jenin: booby-traps, pitfalls, blind alleys, mines, decoys, enfilades of fire, trip-wires, sniper-posts, etc, with terrorists - based in schools, hospitals and mosques - standardly using civilians as human shields.
The message must go out that Washington totally refuses to play this sucker's game.
That's right: it's time for the cleansing, white-heat of thermonukes (with the first likely falling on Faluja) - to set a prime example to the other Islamo-fascists and their sympathizers everywhere....
In this war, there's simply no substitute for our victory.
Well, I don't want to crow, but a minute ago I heard BBC reports of a large number of Arab newspapers, all uniformly boasting that the "heroes" of Faluja have driven the Americans back to the lines from which they opened their attack on the town - described as a "a great victory" for the "brave Iraqi fighters".
Of course, in the real world, the USMC had withdrawn to its old positions outside the city due to such a pull-back being a condition of the truce which the Pentagon has been railroaded into seeking by several pusillanimous & opportunistic members of the Iraqi Governing Council.
Reality, though, has negligible impact on the Arab or Moslem mindset: for them Faluja's a triumph and proof of Allied weakness - which they now itch to exploit to their further advantage.