Insurgents Release 3 Foreign Hostages

Iraqi insurgents Friday released three captives they had threatened to behead -- two Turks and a Pakistani -- but continued to harass foreign workers, firing rockets into two Baghdad hotels housing security contractors.

The release of the Turkish air-conditioning repairmen had been expected, as their employer, Kayteks, capitulated to militants’ demands that the company cease all support and cooperation with the multinational forces in Iraq.

The Arabic satellite TV channel Al Jazeera aired footage showing the men kneeling at the feet of two masked captors who said they were freeing the Turks for showing “repentance” and out of respect for the Turkish people, who are fellow Muslims.

It was unclear why the insurgents holding Pakistani driver Amjad Hafeez decided to free him, as his U.S. employer -- KBR, formerly known as Kellogg Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton Co. -- is one of the largest suppliers of goods and services to the U.S.-led forces. It may have been out of fear that to execute a Muslim would further alienate Iraqis, many of whom were horrified by the beheadings of American contractor Nicholas Berg and South Korean interpreter Kim Sun Il.

Pakistani Information Minister Sheik Rashid Ahmed told journalists in Islamabad that Hafeez had called his family in Pakistan to say that he was safe and in Kuwait.

There has been no word for three days on the fate of another captive, Lebanese-born U.S. Marine Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun. The 24-year-old from West Jordan, Utah, went missing from his unit on June 19 but was classified as a hostage only Tuesday, after footage of the blindfolded soldier in desert camouflage fatigues aired on Al Jazeera.

The channel said Tuesday that Spc. Keith Matthew Maupin, who was taken hostage April 9, had been executed. But U.S. military investigators have been unable to confirm that Maupin, 20, of Batavia, Ohio, was the subject of a grainy videotape that was delivered to Al Jazeera and that purportedly showed the execution.

A member of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force was killed in action Friday near the insurgent stronghold of Fallouja, the U.S. military information center here reported. It was the second combat fatality in the unit in as many days.

Three rocket blasts at the Ishtar (commonly called the Sheraton) and Baghdad hotels around 7:30 a.m. inflicted little damage and no significant casualties. But troops inspecting the scene of the attack speculated that a larger assault had been planned. Seventeen more rockets were found in the charred wreckage of a pickup truck and minibus that had been used as mobile launch pads, suggesting that the third firing had set them ablaze and scuttled the rest of the planned attack.

Iraq’s newly sovereign government has been bracing for an intensified insurgency as militant factions trying to undermine the U.S.-guided transition to democracy have threatened to kill interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.

The toll from car bombs, artillery blasts and improvised explosive devices has been low in the five days since the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority passed the reins of government to Allawi’s team and chief administrator L. Paul Bremer III left the country.

However, Iraqi government officials and multinational force officers note that they remain on guard against concerted attacks.