Philippines Says Hostage Free; Group Denies It, Threatens Life

A militant group claiming to hold a Philippine truck driver denied reports Saturday that the father of eight had been freed after his televised plea for his life and assurances from the Philippines that its 51 troops would be withdrawn from Iraq next month.

A written message to Al Jazeera television warned that Angelo De la Cruz, 46, would be killed if the Philippine government failed to withdraw its military contingent by July 20. It gave Manila a deadline of today to promise compliance.

Less than an hour before the Arabic-language satellite channel aired the message, Philippine officials said De la Cruz had been released and was en route to an undisclosed Baghdad hotel.

Al Jazeera had carried footage earlier in the day of the handcuffed captive urging Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to pull the Philippine contingent out of Iraq. He also urged more than 4,000 other Filipinos who work as civilian contractors in Iraq to leave.

There was also uncertainty Saturday over the fate of two Bulgarians reportedly kidnapped near Mosul in northern Iraq more than a week ago. The captors threatened to kill them unless the U.S.-led multinational forces released all Iraqi prisoners within 24 hours -- a deadline that expired late Friday.

In Ramadi, a city in the heart of the insurgent stronghold known as the Sunni Triangle, gunmen firing from a taxi stand attacked a Marine observation post with small arms shortly after daybreak.

Marines killed three of the attackers and destroyed the taxi stand.

In another incident Saturday in Al Anbar province, which includes Ramadi, four U.S. Marines were killed while on patrol, the U.S. military announced today.

It gave no details on the deaths of the four members of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, which brought to at least 879 the number of U.S. service members who have died in the war.

Insurgents also were blamed for an attack on a natural gas pipeline, which officials said would cut into fuel supplies to a power station north of Kirkuk and curb electricity production. It was not immediately clear how significant the losses would be.

In the Philippines, national security advisor Norberto Gonzales said De la Cruz was “in safe hands.” Reports of De la Cruz’s freedom reaching Manila were convincing enough to prompt Arroyo to telephone the hostage’s wife with the news, setting off jubilation in the family’s hometown.

The group claiming to hold the Filipino told Al Jazeera that it still had him.

“The hostage will remain captive and treated as a prisoner under Islam until the last Filipino soldier leaves Iraq July 20 at the latest ... or he will be executed,” read the letter from the group calling itself the Iraqi Islamic Army-Khaled bin Waleed Corps, which was shown on late-night newscasts of the Qatar-based satellite channel. The group said it was giving the Philippine government 24 hours to demonstrate that it was serious about withdrawing.

The De la Cruz case was the latest in a flurry of kidnappings aimed at weakening support for the U.S.-led forces.

A Pakistani employee of the U.S. contractor KBR, a Halliburton subsidiary, returned to Islamabad on Saturday with harrowing tales of having witnessed three beheadings while being held by an extremist group.

Amjad Hafeez, 26, told Associated Press that he was locked in a small room by his captors for three days, then taken to witness the beheadings of two English-speaking foreigners and an Iraqi. He gave no further details on the victims. Hafeez was released July 2.

The conflicting reports on De la Cruz’s whereabouts followed a cautiously worded response from the Philippine government to the kidnappers’ demands late Wednesday.

Manila said its troops would leave “on schedule by Aug. 20,” making no mention of ongoing discussions about replacing those soldiers. It also said nothing about the future of the thousands of Filipinos who provide catering, janitorial, construction and maintenance services for foreign troops in Iraq.

In a tape presented as his “final appeal,” De la Cruz begged Arroyo to withdraw the troops. He was wearing an orange jumpsuit like those worn by American communications specialist Nicholas Berg and South Korean interpreter Kim Sun Il before they were beheaded by a group reportedly loyal to Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab Zarqawi, who is blamed for car bombings and other attacks throughout Iraq.

The group claimed responsibility for kidnapping the Bulgarians.

Bulgaria has allied itself with the United States since the fall of the Iron Curtain. It has 480 soldiers serving under Polish command in southern Iraq.

“This is not a demand to the Bulgarian government, but to a third country [the United States], and therefore we cannot even consider it,” Bulgarian Foreign Minister Solomon Pasi told reporters in the Bulgarian capital, Sofia.

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Times staff writer Patrick J. McDonnell in Ramadi contributed to this report.