Violence spiralling in Iraq

BAGHDAD - Japan has denounced the beheading of a Japanese hostage in Iraq after a day that saw the heaviest US casualties for six months and the bloodiest attack on a media organisation since the start of the war.

Nine US marines were killed and a bomb attack on an Arab television station claimed seven lives in Baghdad yesterday.

Japanese officials confirmed a body and head found in the Iraqi capital were those of Shosei Koda, 24, a backpacker thought to have taken a bus to Iraq from Jordan last week.

An Iraqi Interior Ministry spokesman said the body, with its feet bound, had been wrapped in an American flag.

Television footage showed Koda's corpse in a white, blood- soaked shirt and his severed head with a thin beard.

"I once again feel anger at this cruel and inhuman act," said Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, a close ally of US President George W. Bush. He said Japan's 500 non-combat troops would stay in Iraq despite the killing.

Militants led by al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, America's top enemy in Iraq, had threatened on Tuesday to behead Koda within 48 hours unless Japanese troops went home.

Iraqi police found the body in the restive Haifa street area of central Baghdad where insurgents are active.

Four other Japanese - two diplomats and two journalists - have been killed in Iraq since the start of the US-led war.

US artillery shelled Iraq's rebel city of Falluja on Sunday and the military said an air strike the previous day had destroyed a mortar bunker used by insurgents.

It was not immediately clear what the gunners were targeting in the latest of near-daily bombardments of the city.

US marines have said they are getting set for a major offensive to drive guerrillas from their strongholds in Falluja and Ramadi, another Sunni Muslim city west of Baghdad.

The aim is to crush an estimated 2,000 guerrillas and foreign militants in Falluja to enable Iraq's interim government to hold national elections in January.

Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi met a group of Sunni clerics in a last-ditch appeal for a peaceful solution. The clerics, too frightened to be named publicly, said they would respond in a few days, a statement from Allawi's office said.

MARINE TOLL RISES

The military said the combat death toll suffered by marines in Anbar province west of Baghdad yesterday had risen to nine. Another nine marines were wounded in action.

In line with its usual practice, the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force has not disclosed the circumstances of the casualties, which were the heaviest inflicted on US forces in Iraq in a single day for more than six months.

Seven people were killed and 19 wounded by a car bomb outside the Baghdad office of Dubai-based Al Arabiya satellite television. It was the deadliest attack on the media since the US-led war to topple Saddam Hussein began in March, 2003.

The majority Saudi-owned channel has often been criticised on web sites used by Islamist militant groups for its perceived pro-Western stance in the Arab world. A recent posting purportedly by Zarqawi's group had also threatened Al Arabiya.

A little-known Iraqi group said it carried out the attack.

"Thank God, the building of the Arabic-speaking Americanised spy journalists was destroyed," said the 1920 Battalions, in a statement posted on web sites.

Seven Iraqis were also killed on Saturday during clashes with US troops in a lawless area southwest of Baghdad.

Iraqi-Polish hostage Teresa Borcz Khalifa pleaded for her life in a video aired on Saturday, saying her fate hung on the withdrawal of Polish forces from Iraq.

"I am asking for help ... from Poland and the Polish people and whoever can help me," Al Jazeera television quoted her as saying in the video which showed her sitting under the black banner of the militant Islamic group, Abu Bakr al-Seddiq Salafist Brigades, that kidnapped her last week.

At least 25 foreigners from a dozen countries are held by kidnappers trying to drive foreign troops and workers from Iraq. Scores of foreigners have been abducted since April. Many have been freed, but more than 35 have been killed.

- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq