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DUBAI, Oct 2: Al Qaeda said on Sunday it had captured two US marines in western Iraq and issued a 24-hour ultimatum to US forces to release female Sunni prisoners, a statement posted on a Web site said on Sunday.
The latest statement came in the midst of a new US offensive in towns in the far west of Iraq to track down Al Qaeda militants US forces believe are hiding near the Syrian border.
“Al Qaeda soldiers succeeded in kidnapping two US marines ... and Al Qaeda is giving the infidels 24 hours to release female Sunni Muslim prisoners,” it said.
“Or they should not bother to look for their children,” said the statement, on a Web site often used by the group.
The statement said the two marines were captured in the midst of Operation Iron Fist, “in which they (US forces) have been disappointed and have failed”.
US DOUBTS CLAIM: Meanwhile, the US military rejected an Al Qaeda claim to be holding two US marines hostage in western Iraq as Marines attacked Al Qaeda guerillas in the region for a second day.
A US military spokesman in Baghdad, Lieutenant Colonel Steve Boylan, said: “I have not heard anything about any of our folks being taken. I would suspect that these are unfounded rumours, as that is what has happened in the past.”
The US military said it had killed eight guerillas on Saturday, and rejected allegations by local doctors that civilians had also been killed in US air strikes. Interior Minister Bayan Jabor told Reuters that documents seized after troops killed a purported aide to Al Qaeda’s leader in Iraq, the Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, indicated a plan to spread Islamist violence to other Arab countries.
“We got hold of a very important letter from Abu Azzam to Zarqawi asking him to begin to move a number of Arab fighters to the countries they came from, to transfer their experience in car bombings in Iraq,” Jabor he said in an interview in Amman.
“So you will see insurgencies in other countries,” said Jabor, a member of the Shia Islamist SCIRI party, a key component of the Shia- and Kurdish-led coalition government.—Reuters
