11 April 2004	Sunday	20 Safar 1425

DUBAI, April 10: Iraqi kidnappers said in a tape aired on an Arabic television station on Saturday they will kill a US hostage they are holding unless US forces lift the siege of Fallujah. "Up to now your prisoner is being dealt with in the tolerant manner specified by Islamic law. Our one request is to break the siege of the city of the mosques (Fallujah) during the 12 hours from six o'clock on Saturday evening," a voice on a tape shown on the Al Jazeera said.

"If not, he will be dealt with worse than those who were killed and burned in Fallujah," the voice added in the tape, which also showed the man in front of an Iraqi flag.

JAPANESE: The abductors of three Japanese nationals in Iraq have decided to free their hostages within 24 hours in response to an appeal from religious leaders, the Al Jazeera TV network said on Saturday night.

"The armed men who kidnapped three Japanese in Iraq have decided to release them within 24 hours," it said.

"A statement issued by the so-called 'Mujahideen Brigades' said that they responded to a request from the Council of Muslim Ulema in Iraq" to free the trio, Al Jazeera added.

The statement urged the Japanese people to put pressure on their government to withdraw troops from Iraq, according to the news channel.

Meanwhile, officials in Berlin said a search is under way for two German security officials who disappeared and may have been killed while travelling from Amman to Baghdad.

An Iraqi newspaper published pictures of two men it said the German embassy in Baghdad confirmed went missing on Wednesday on a road near the volatile Sunni town of Falluja. Al Raqeeb said the embassy told the paper it feared they had been kidnapped. But the Interior Ministry in Berlin said the two embassy guards may have been killed because there were no signs of a kidnapping. Germany's ARD television said the car of the two guards was found abandoned and badly damaged after a shootout.

The network said the two Germans were in a vehicle that was part of a three or four vehicle convoy in which other German security officials were riding. It also later reported that graves were found near the sight of the attack late on Saturday but that the search was called off at darkness.

A Foreign Ministry spokeswoman could not confirm the report.

"It can't be ruled out that they have been killed," said an Interior Ministry spokesman earlier, adding security officials were taking part in a routine exchange of staff at the embassy.

He also could not confirm German media reports the two were members of Germany's elite anti-terror GSG-9 security force.

Several foreigners have been taken hostage on dangerous roads between Baghdad and Amman, Jordan, which pass through the Falluja area where the ongoing Sunni insurgency against U.S. forces intensified this week.

Many people use land routes to come into Iraq because of the danger of planes being hit by missiles.

11 KILLED: Eleven Iraqis, including a policeman, were killed and 35 wounded in the past 24 hours in clashes between US troops and insurgents in the troubled Diyala province, north of Baghdad, police said on Saturday.

Police lieutenant Ahmad Abbas told AFP that the casualties fell in confrontations in various regions of the province.

Abdel Wadud Motlaq al-Ujayli, the policeman who died, was shot in the village of Bohzoz, south of Baquba, as he was manning the rooftop of a local police station.

Mainly Sunni Muslim Baquba has seen frequent attacks on the US-led coalition and its Iraqi police and paramilitary allies.

NINE DEAD: In the main northern city of Mosul, five policemen, two assailants and a civilian were killed in two separate attacks on Saturday, police said.

"Armed men opened fire on a patrol in the Wihda neighbourhood in the eastern sector of the city, killing two policemen and a taxi driver who was passing by," Colonel Salman Hassan said.-Agencies