Bodies of 2 Turkish Workers Found Near Baghdad

Iraqi police discovered the bodies of two Turkish nationals and an unidentified man Thursday in a rural area north of Baghdad, but there were promising reports about a pair of French hostages.

Meanwhile, an Iraqi driver employed by Associated Press was fatally shot in an ambush near his home in Baghdad, the wire service reported.

The deaths underscored the perils facing foreigners and Iraqis working for overseas firms here. In recent months, scores of people employed by U.S. government contractors and foreign companies have been kidnapped or ambushed.

Before Thursday, 142 contract workers in Iraq had been killed, according to a website that tallies kidnappings and casualties based on news accounts. Insurgents seeking the withdrawal of U.S. and other foreign troops from Iraq have tried to frighten contract workers into leaving and to punish Iraqis who work for foreign military forces and private companies.

In what would be the worst such case, 12 Nepalese workers were believed slain this week after a militant group released a videotape that appeared to show one of the men being beheaded and the others shot at close range.

In other developments, French officials and Islamic leaders continued to work for the release of the two French journalists taken hostage Aug. 19 in an area south of Baghdad where roadside attacks are common.

French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier told reporters in Amman, Jordan, that the journalists -- Georges Malbrunot of Le Figaro and Christian Chesnot of Radio France International -- were “alive and getting good treatment.”

Barnier made several stops in the Middle East as part of his government’s efforts to free the men, and met with French Muslim clerics who traveled to Iraq to work for the release.

French media said the abductors had handed the hostages over to a separate faction that has said it favored their release -- a possible sign of progress. But a spokesman for the French Embassy in Baghdad said he could not confirm the reports.

The kidnappers, members of a group calling itself the Islamic Army in Iraq, had demanded that France drop a new law banning Islamic head scarves in public schools. The law went into effect Thursday as French students started the school year.

Iraqi police found the three bodies near Samarra, about 60 miles northwest of Baghdad. The Arabic-language Al Jazeera satellite television channel said it received a videotape from a militant group that purportedly showed the killings of three Turkish hostages.

It was unclear whether the slain hostages in the video were the men whose bodies were found near Samarra. TV reports showed the bodies lying together, the faces bloodied and disfigured.

Police said two of the men were identified as being from Turkey, but the third victim’s identity was not known.

The video was distributed by a group called Jamaat al Tawhid wal Jihad, which is linked to Jordanian militant Abu Musab Zarqawi, who is wanted in connection with car bombings, kidnappings and other attacks. U.S. authorities have offered a $25-million reward for information leading to his capture.

In the case of Associated Press driver Ismail Taher Mohsin, the news service said attackers fired numerous shots into his car in a neighborhood near central Baghdad that had seen repeated attacks on U.S. convoys.

Family members said he had not been threatened, the wire service said.

In other developments, hospital officials in Fallouja said the death toll rose to 17 from a U.S. airstrike Wednesday on two buildings that the military said were being used by Zarqawi associates. Fifteen people were injured.

Ellingwood, of The Times’ Jerusalem Bureau, is on assignment in Baghdad.