31 July 2004	Saturday	13 Jamadi-us-Saani 1425

BAGHDAD, July 30: Two Sunni clerics on Friday appealed to the Islamic Army in Iraq to hand over the bodies of two murdered Pakistani hostages so they could be returned to their home country.

The clerics, from the Committee of Muslim Ulema, made their appeals during Friday prayers at the request of Mohammed Iftikhar Anjum, Pakistan's charge d'affairs in Baghdad.

"The Pakistani diplomat just called me asking me to intervene so that the bodies are handed over to him," said Sheikh Ahmed Hassan al-Taha at the Abu Hanifa mosque in the Iraqi capital.

"The execution was sad news and we do not want to lose our links with the great Muslim country which has good relations with us," he said during his Friday prayers address.

At the Um al-Qura mosque, Sheikh Ahmed Abdel Ghafur al-Samarrai made the same appeal, saying he too had received a call from the Pakistani diplomat.

Anjum on Thursday confirmed to AFP that the two Pakistanis had been killed and asked for their bodies to be handed over to him so they could be repatriated to Pakistan to be buried according to Islamic tenets. -AFP