Baghdad, Iraq – British ground forces and U.S. military helicopters fought with gunmen today in southern Iraq where four American security contractors and their Austrian co-worker were abducted in a convoy hijacking.
The Austrian was found dead and one of the Americans was gravely wounded, an Iraqi police officer said. The three Americans who were among the five Crescent Security Group employees taken hostage remained missing.
Nine Asian employees were released by the captors, the company said.
Capt. Tane Dunlop, a spokesman for British forces who were fighting gunmen in the area where the kidnapping took place, said in a telephone interview from Basra that the hijacking occurred at 1 p.m. Thursday in Safwan, an Iraqi city near the Kuwait border. He said the convoy was coming from Kuwait.
At dawn today, British ground forces and helicopters searched an area of Safwan for gunmen who had attacked coalition forces in the past few days when about 10 of them opened fire from farm buildings, Dunlop said. The British and U.S. forces returned fire, Dunlop said.
As violence in Iraq continued to spiral out of control, a crisis was brewing for Iraq’s Shiite-led government.
The influential Association of Muslim Scholars called on Sunni politicians to quit Iraq’s government and parliament, angered by the government’s decision to issue an arrest warrant for the association’s leader, Harith al-Dhari.
Abdul-Salam al-Kubaisi, a spokesman for the association, said the arrest warrant was political cover for “the acts of the government’s security agencies that kill dozens of Iraqis every day.” Al-Kubaisi called for “political groups to withdraw from parliament and the government, which has proven that it is not a national government.” Sunni Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi also condemned the arrest warrant saying “it is destructive to the national reconciliation plan.” In a statement, al-Hashimi urged the government to cancel the warrant immediately.
Al-Dhari, who is in Jordan, said the arrest warrant was illegal and “proof of the failure and the confusion of the Iraqi government.” Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani issued the warrant on Thursday night, declaring on state television that al-Dhari was wanted for inciting terrorism and violence.
The move is seen as certain to inflame Iraq’s raging sectarian violence. The interior minister is a Shiite, while al-Dhari is a Sunni extremist who recently mocked a government offer of reconciliation in return for abandoning the insurgency.
Al-Dhari, who has been outside Iraq for months, said: “The timing of the warrant came when the Iraqi government felt embarrassed by its failure in security.” President Bush, speaking today in Asia, promised to stand with the embattled government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
“We’ll succeed unless we quit,” Bush said. “The Maliki government is going to make it unless the coalition leaves before they have a chance to make it.” Control of the area where the kidnapping took place had been formally handed to the Iraqi government from British and Italian forces.
The body of the Austrian was taken to a morgue in the city of Basra, and the wounded American was taken there so he could be transferred to a British military hospital, the Basra officer said on condition of anonymity out of concern for his own security.
The Austrian and American had been found about 20 miles north of Safwan, where the convoy hijacking took place.
In Vienna, Astrid Harz, a spokeswoman for the Austrian foreign ministry, confirmed that a 25-year-old Austrian man had been kidnapped when the Crescent Security Group convoy was hijacked in southern Iraq on Thursday. She could not confirm that he had been killed.
U.S. officials could not immediately be contacted about the report that the American had been wounded.
An Iraqi police officer said the convoy had been stopped at a checkpoint on Thursday by Iraqi men, some of them wearing police uniforms.
The Crescent Security Group company works mostly in Iraq, and its operations are based in Kuwait. Many of its managers and employees are American.
A U.S. Embassy official, who refused to be identified because he was not authorized to release the information, said the convoy included 43 heavy trucks and six security vehicles.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said Thursday that preliminary reports suggested the attacked convoy included about 19 vehicles.
A State Department official informed the family of Paul Reuben, 39, a former police officer from suburban Minneapolis who was working as a security contractor in Iraq, that he was among those captured, his brother, Patrick Reuben, told the Star Tribune newspaper and KSTP-TV in St. Paul, Minn.
The Iraqi police officer said five gunmen and one British soldier were wounded in the subsequent fighting. But Dunlop could not immediately confirm that. The Iraqi officer spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.
Italy formally handed over security responsibility of the southern Dhi Qar Province to Iraqi forces in late September, and British troops handed over control of the adjacent southern Muthana province in July.
