Abducted Reporter Sends a Plea for Help

One of three Romanian journalists abducted Monday night near their Baghdad hotel later sent a text message to her newsroom saying, “Help, this is not a joke, we’ve been kidnapped.”

The abductees were identified Tuesday as reporter Marie Jeanne Ion, 32, and cameraman Sorin Dumitru Miscoci, 30, with Bucharest-based television station Prima TV, and Romania Libera newspaper reporter Ovidiu Ohanesian, 37.

Petre Mihai Bacanu, managing editor of Romania Libera, said the three had disappeared shortly after interviewing interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.

Bacanu said no group had claimed responsibility and no ransom demand had been made.

The hotel, where many foreign journalists stay, is in Baghdad’s upscale Jadriya area and is surrounded by a concrete barrier, an employee said.

A Prima TV statement said Ion had called the newsroom, speaking a mixture of Romanian, Arabic and English, and was heard apparently talking to her abductors.

“Don’t kill us, we are from a poor country and we have no money,” the statement quoted her as saying. She later sent the text message.

Romanian President Traian Basescu made a surprise visit Sunday to Iraq, where his country has 800 troops, but the journalists did not travel with him.

In a separate incident, a video was posted on the Internet showing three men who said they worked for a Jordanian trucking company being shot by gunmen claiming to be with a militant Islamic group in Iraq.

Ansar al Sunna posted the video on a website known as a clearinghouse for Islamic militant material. Its authenticity could not be verified.

The three men were shown being shot in the back of the head in a desert-like area. The identities and nationalities of the men were unclear because of the poor quality of the tape.

One of the men said he worked for the Jordan-based Shaheen Co., contracted by U.S. forces to supply Iraqi police academies in Hillah and Kut, south of Baghdad.

In the Jordanian capital, Amman, company official Mustafa Nassan said he could not confirm the reports.

Also on Tuesday, U.S. military officials announced that a soldier assigned to the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Marine Division, 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force had died Monday “in a nonhostile incident.” No details were given. More than 1,520 U.S. service members have died since the start of the war in March 2003.