May 03, 2004

Associated Press

RAMADI, Iraq — An Iraqi guerrilla group threatened Monday to assassinate the local Iraqi governor and police chief and suggested that it is holding foreign hostages, demanding that U.S. forces leave Iraq.
The statement by the group Muhammad’s Army was distributed by a group of children in the city of Ramadi, west of Baghdad and Fallujah, the insurgent stronghold that U.S. troops besieged last month.

It warned that the governor of Anbar province — the large western province where Ramadi and Fallujah are located — and the police chief were on a “long list (of people) that we have begun to eliminate.”

The group said it would announce “the prisoners” it was holding at a later date. The insurgents demanded that U.S. forces withdraw from Iraq, all detainees in coalition hands be released and that a sum of money be paid for each hostage.

The group did not say how many hostages it was holding or their nationalities, and there was no way to independently confirm its claim to be holding any.

An American soldier and three Italians are known still to be held hostage by insurgents.

In the statement, the group also threatened to bomb any government building that flies the new Iraqi flag approved last week by the U.S.-appointed Governing Council. “The building will be blown up even it has 1,000 innocent people in it,” the group said.

Many Iraqis have resoundingly rejected the new flag, which dumps the Arab nationalist and Islamic symbolism of the old banner.

U.S. officials have said Muhammad’s Army, one of a number of insurgency groups that have arisen, appears to be an umbrella group of former Iraqi intelligence and security agents.