In Iraq, car bomb wounds local Sunni politician

Police say a car bomb attack wounded a member of a Sunni political party and his son and killed two of his bodyguards.

Police say unknown gunmen also opened fire on the house of Zaki Obaid Fayadh, head of the local branch of the Iraqi Islamic party, in Fallujah about 40 miles west of Baghdad. Sunday's explosion occurred in Fayadh's garage.

Police say it appears that the bomb was planted under a car.

The party is led by Sunni Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi

British hostage in Iraq is dead

A Shiite militia that claimed responsibility for the kidnapping of five Britons in Iraq more than a year ago said one of its hostages committed suicide, a British newspaper reported.

The Sunday Times of London published what it said was a statement in a video it obtained from the group through an intermediary in Iraq.

The video, available on the Times Web site late Saturday night, shows an Arabic-language statement claiming that one of the hostages — identified only as Jason — killed himself on May 25. A photograph, apparently of Jason, is affixed to the top left corner of the statement.

The newspaper said the statement blamed the British government for ignoring previous statements that the kidnappers and the captives have made. In the past, the militia has demanded that that all British forces be withdrawn from Iraq and that Iraqis held by U.S.-led forces be freed.

"This procrastination and foot-dragging and lack of seriousness on the part of the British government has prolonged their psychological deterioration, pushing one of them, Jason, to commit suicide on 25/5/2008," the Times quoted the statement as saying.

It was not immediately clear which hostage the group was referring to.

Five men — information technology consultant Peter Moore and four guards — were kidnapped from the Iraqi Finance Ministry compound in Baghdad in a brazen raid in May 29, 2007. Two of the guards are named Jason and the others are Alan and Alec. Their surnames have been withheld at their families' request.

In December, a man identified as Jason was featured in a hostage video aired on Al-Arabiya television. Looking haggard and occasionally glancing down as if to read a piece of paper, Jason said he and his fellow captives felt they had been forgotten.

Like the video carried by The Sunday Times, the Al-Arabiya broadcast showed a statement and identified the men's captors as the Shiite Islamic Resistance in Iraq.

The British government said Saturday night that it could not confirm the veracity of the latest video or verify its claims.

But British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who had just left Iraq after meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Saturday, called The Sunday Times report a "very distressing development" said that he was taking it seriously.

"I raised the case of these men with PM Maliki," Brown said in a statement. "We both share a desire to see them returned safely to their families. I call on those holding the hostages to release them immediately and unconditionally."

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband called hostage-taking "disgusting" and deplored the "deep distress and concern" he said the report would cause the families of the five men.

The video carried by the Times shows another hostage, speaking against a blank wall and apparently reading something. The hostage, identified by the Times as Alan, appeals for the British government to release Iraqi prisoners, "especially female and religious prisoners."

"I'd like that to be done within one month," he says.

He adds that despite what he calls "good treatment" from the Iraqi resistance, he was not doing well.

"Psychologically, I'm doing a lot worse. I want to see my family again. I'd like for the British government to please hurry," he says. It was unclear from the video exactly when he made the statement, although in it he says he has been in captivity more than a year.

There did not appear to be any footage of Jason, who purportedly committed suicide. The Times reported that its unidentified intermediary said proof of the man's death would only be provided if the British government agreed to negotiate.

The fate of the five men has received increased scrutiny in Britain, particularly following the first broadcast featuring Jason and another video, aired in February, showing Moore.

In late February the families of the men released their own video, read by Pauline Sweeny, Moore's stepmother, pleading for their release. The kidnappers apparently responded a month later with a posting on a militant Web site rejecting the plea as inspired by the British government.

In May, the former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey lent his voice to the families' appeal, addressing the kidnappers as "honorable men" and "men of faith."

Deadly fighting in Baghdad as Iraq marks Saddam's fall

Iraq on Wednesday marked the fifth anniversary of the fall of Saddam Hussein's iron-fisted regime with the nation still in turmoil, the capital under curfew and a surge of deadly violence in the Shiite bastion of Sadr City.

Iraqi officials said three mortar rounds slammed into Sadr City, the eastern Baghdad stronghold of anti-American Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, killing at least seven people and wounding 24 others.

One mortar round struck the rooftop of a house where a family was having breakfast, killing three members of a family, including two children.

Another mortar struck a nearby tent set up for a condolence service for a person killed earlier in the week, while a third fell on an empty plot.

Clashes in the sprawling Shiite district in the early hours killed another six people and wounded at least 15, a medical official said.

Sadr City has been wracked by fighting since Sunday between Sadr's Mahdi Army militia and US and Iraqi forces in which at least 55 people have died and scores have been wounded.

The US military says it is chasing "criminals" firing rockets into Baghdad and the heavily fortified Green Zone where the Iraqi government and US embassy are sited.

Sadr had last week called for a million-strong anti-American demonstration in Baghdad to mark the anniversary of Saddam's ouster by US invading forces but cancelled it on Tuesday "to save Iraqi blood."

Baghdad's streets were empty of cars and trucks after the authorities declared a 5:00 am to midnight (0200 GMT to 2100 GMT) vehicle curfew to prevent car bomb attacks by Sunni insurgents.

Saddam's hometown of Tikrit was also under a day-long curfew, an AFP correspondent said.

It took US invading forces just three weeks to defeat Saddam's forces and topple his regime on April 9, 2003.

On that day, US Marines put a rope around the neck of a giant statue of Saddam in Baghdad's Firdoos Square, pulling it down in an act that symbolised the fall of the dictator's brutal regime.

A jubilant Iraqi crowd "insulted" the fallen statue by smacking its face with their shoes.

But five years later the American military and Baghdad's new Shiite-led regime are still battling to curb the bloodshed that has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced more than four million.

Fears of an uptick in the violence are running deep after hardline Sadr, angered by attacks on his militiamen, threatened on Tuesday to end the truce his feared Mahdi Army militia has been observing since August.

US commanders acknowledge that the ceasefire was one of the factors behind a sharp drop in violence across Iraq in the second half of last year.

Although US President George W. Bush insisted in March that toppling Saddam was the "right decision", his commanders are finding it difficult to bring stability to Iraq despite last year's "surge" strategy of deploying an extra 30,000 troops.

The top US general in Iraq, David Petraeus, urged in testimony to the US Congress on Tuesday that further troop withdrawals should be held off for at least 45 days after completing the pullout of the "surge" forces by July.

Petraeus said the surge had helped make "significant but uneven" progress in Iraq, while Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker warned that those achievements were "reversible."

For Iraqis, the five years since the ouster of Saddam has been a period of turmoil and bloodletting.

"When I saw the American tanks roll into Baghdad, I was happy and full of dreams... dreams of a prosperous Iraq, a developed Iraq. But since then it has become a nightmare of suffering and destruction," said Sarah Yussef, 25.

The war has killed tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians since the US-led invasion. Between 104,000 and 223,000 people died from March 2003 to June 2006 alone, according to the World Health Organisation.

The songs of joy that greeted the American tanks when they reached Baghdad have long since become cries of hatred.

Majeed Hameed, a gift shop owner in Baghdad's northern Antar Square, said the American tanks rolling on the streets of Baghdad are now seen as "enemy" forces.

"We can't describe how savage these barbarians are whose promises were false and full of lies. They came to occupy and cause destruction. We got nothing but disaster," said Hameed.

Basim Atia, an unemployed man living in Karrada district of central Baghdad, described the toppling of Saddam as a "black day" in the history of Iraq.

"On that day, all our values were turned upside down. Today we see only killing and sectarianism, and scientists and doctors are fleeing the country."