Iraq officials retract statements on assassination
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-04-19 08:43

Iraqi Interior Ministry officials said a senior official was assassinated in his home on Monday, adding they had misidentified the official earlier.

They named the dead man as Major-General Adnan Midhish Kharagoli, an adviser to the defense minister. He was killed along with his nephew when 10 gunmen burst into his Baghdad home.

Interior Ministry officials had earlier said the victim was Major-General Adnan Thabet, hours after he told the media that a hostage crisis was exaggerated.

An Iraqi soldier guides a 16 year-old detainee following his arrest during a joint security operation in the town of Madaen south of Baghdad, April 18, 2005. Iraqi forces searched the town near Baghdad for evidence of dozens of Shi'ites said to have been taken hostage by Sunni militants, a claim government officials said was exaggerated for political ends. [Reuters]

"We made a mistake," said one of the officials, who declined to be named.

Such reports of an assassination could fuel sectarian tensions during a time of widespread violence and political uncertainty gripping Iraq.

The comments added to the confusion over reports of a hostage crisis in the town of Madaen, near Baghdad, and reinforced fears of a political vacuum.

Iraq's bickering leaders have failed to form a new government 11 weeks after Jan. 30 elections that politicians promised would deliver stability after two years of suicide bombings, kidnappings and rampant crime.

Senior officials in a leading Shi'ite party have been insisting that Sunni insurgents took up to 150 Shi'ites hostage over the weekend and threatened to kill them unless all Shi'ites left the area.

Those claims were supported by comments by caretaker Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, Minister of State for National Security Kassim Daoud and Iraqis who waited outside Madean and said they were relatives of the hostages.

But doubts have been growing over the affair since raids by Iraqi forces backed by U.S. troops failed to produce any evidence of kidnappers or hostages.

Some Iraqis accused their new leaders of fabricating the hostage drama for political aims and urged them to focus on tackling relentless violence and unemployment instead of making comments that could fuel sectarian tensions.

Thabet said of the hostage affair: "The number of hostages has been greatly exaggerated."

Police cautioned from the start that perhaps only a few people were being held and said the situation was the result of weeks of tit-for-tat kidnapping between rival tribes.

Despite those findings, Shi'ite politicians in Baghdad maintained that abuses had occurred in and near Madaen.

They put Reuters in touch with Shi'ite villagers from the town of Suwayra, south of Madaen, who said scores of bodies had been found dumped in the Tigris river over the last few days.

Some had been moved to a local military hospital by Iraqi troops, they said.

A Reuters cameraman visited Suwayra, spoke with village residents and police and toured the hospital but found no evidence of bodies.

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