Iraq insurgents free Chinese hostages

BAGHDAD - Insurgents in Iraq say they have released eight Chinese hostages, as an Islamist militant group said it had shot dead 15 kidnapped Iraqi soldiers in continued violence ahead of this month's election.

A leader of Iraq's Shi'ite community said his supporters would not be drawn into civil war despite being targeted by mainly Sunni militants, and the interim government announced extraordinary security measures for the January 30 vote.

A video produced by insurgents and seen by Reuters showed the eight Chinese labourers kidnapped earlier this month standing or kneeling in the desert holding their passports.

A man with his face covered by a traditional chequered headdress shook hands with each of them before they walked off camera. The speaker on the tape said they were being released.

The Chinese embassy in Baghdad confirmed the men had been freed, but by nightfall said it was trying to locate them.

Guerrillas fighting US-led troops and Iraq's American- backed government have kidnapped more than 100 foreigners over the past year and killed around a third of them.

They are also waging a campaign of suicide attacks and ambushes ahead of the election, targeting Iraqi security forces, election officials and the country's Shi'ite majority.

Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, the top candidate on a mainly Shi'ite list expected to dominate the elections, said Shi'ites would not respond to the attacks with violence of their own.

"We are strongly standing in the face of this evil plan and any sectarian sedition," Hakim, head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, told Reuters.

At least 25 Shi'ites were killed in two suicide car bomb attacks in and near Baghdad on Friday.

The first targeted a mosque in the suburbs of the capital, killing 14, while the second ripped through a wedding party, leaving at least 11 dead.

Shi'ite Muslims have been repeatedly attacked ahead of the election, which is expected to cement the new political dominance of the 60 per cent majority after years of oppression under Saddam Hussein.

Many Sunni Arabs, from whom Saddam drew his ruling class, fear they will be marginalised.

Several leading Sunni groups have announced an election boycott. The insurgency raging in Iraq's Sunni Muslim heartlands means that many Sunnis who want to vote say they do not dare.

In a sign of the insurgents' confidence, a group beheaded an Iraqi soldier in broad daylight in the restive rebel town of Ramadi on Friday. They left the body, still dressed in army fatigues, in the street with the severed head placed on the torso and a note warning other Iraqi troops to quit their jobs.

One insurgent group, the Army of Ansar al-Sunna, said on its website it had killed 15 Iraqi soldiers it had captured on a western desert road last week.

"Let them be an example to all those who fight God and his Prophet and help the Christians," the group said in a statement, referring to US and other foreign forces in Iraq.

Ten Iraqis, nine of them soldiers, were injured in a car bomb attack outside the headquarters of Polish troops in Hilla, 60 miles south of Baghdad.

Faced with such attacks, Iraq has said it will close its land borders and impose strict restrictions on traffic on election day to prevent non-official vehicles getting near polling stations.

Baghdad airport will be closed on January 29 and 30 and nighttime curfews will be extended in several cities.

The Geneva-based International Organisation for Migration said it was extending by two days the registration deadline for Iraqis voting abroad because of low turnout in some countries. By Thursday, only about 93,000 of the estimated one million eligible voters overseas had registered.

- REUTERS