Video Shows Militants Killing 11 Hostages

An insurgent group said today that 11 members of the Iraqi national guard abducted between Baghdad and the south-central city of Hillah have been executed.

The Ansar al Sunna Army, which claimed responsibility over the weekend for the beheading of an Iraqi who worked for the U.S. military near the northern city of Mosul, also admitted to the latest slayings. The killings were recorded on videotape and shown on the group’s Arabic website.

The group announced Tuesday on its website that it held the 11 men captive, but it remained unclear when the hostages were taken. The executions represented the largest loss of life today in violence aimed at the U.S. and its supporters.

Today, interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi made another appeal to avoid the launching of a major military offensive in Fallouja. Unless Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab Zarqawi is turned over, he warned, Iraqi and U.S. forces will attempt to wrest control of the guerrilla stronghold in preparation for the national elections scheduled for January.

Zarqawi is wanted for a wave of violence directed against U.S. troops and civilians across the country. Today, insurgents were believed to have carried out a wide range of violence.

A pair of U.S. soldiers were killed in separate attacks. The U.S. military declined to identify the victims until their families could be notified. The violence raised the number of U.S. military deaths in Iraq to at least 1,110 people.

In one incident, a soldier died and two others sustained minor wounds when insurgents detonated a car bomb in southern Baghdad. In another case, one soldier died this afternoon when insurgents fired rocket-propelled grenades at U.S. troops near Tikrit, the military said.

A Polish-born woman, who is believed to be married to an Iraqi and lived in the country for years, also was taken captive today. The woman, identified as Teresa Borcz-Kalifa, 60, worked previously at the Polish Embassy in Baghdad, officials said.

A group called Abu Bakr Siddiq Fundamentalist Brigades claimed responsibility for her abduction. She appeared in a video that aired today on Al-Jazeera television, with two gunmen standing behind her. Although her voice was inaudible on the tape, the network said she urged Polish troops to pull out of Iraq, and for female detainees to be released from Abu Ghraib prison, the Associated Press reported.

Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski was quoted as saying he has no plans to concede “to the dictate of terrorists.”

His country has sent about 2,500 soldiers to Iraq, but announced plans earlier this month to begin pulling them out as soon as January. Two other Poles taken hostage previously in Iraq have either escaped or been released.

Borcz-Kalifa’s capture was the second female kidnapping in Iraq in recent days. More than 30 kidnapped men have been killed since April, and seven women who were taken hostage were freed.

On Oct. 19, Margaret Hassan, the director of the CARE humanitarian group in Iraq, was taken captive by insurgents. Today, the group said that it will shut down in the country. Hassan, who is believed to be in captive hands, has made several videotaped appeals for her life, while asking for British troops to leave Iraq.

One other civilian hostage from Japan was shown in a video as the deadline for meeting his captor’s demands — that Japan withdrew its troops — grew shorter.

Shosei Koda, a Japanese tourist, appeared in a video Tuesday saying he would be decapitated by a group believed to be linked to Zarqawi unless Japan withdraws its troops.

Times wire services were used in this report.