IRAQ Militants: Hostage was not released

The Philippine president had told the hostage's wife that he had been freed.
COMBINED DISPATCHES
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A militant group claiming to hold a Filipino truck driver hostage denied reports Saturday that the father of eight had been freed after his televised plea for his life and assurances from the Manila government that its 51 troops would be withdrawn from Iraq next month.
A written message to the Al-Jazeera TV channel warned that Angelo dela Cruz, 46, would be killed if the Philippine government fails to withdraw its military contingent by July 20. It gave Manila, the Philippine capital, a deadline of today to promise compliance.
Less than an hour before the Arabic-language satellite channel aired the message, Philippine officials said dela Cruz had been released and was en route to an undisclosed Baghdad hotel.
Al-Jazeera had carried footage earlier in the day of the handcuffed captive urging Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to pull the Filipino contingent out of Iraq. He also urged more than 4,000 other Filipinos who work as civilian contractors in Iraq to leave.
There was also uncertainty Saturday over the fate of two Bulgarians kidnapped near Mosul in northern Iraq more than a week ago. The kidnappers threatened to kill them unless the U.S.-led multinational forces released all Iraqi prisoners within 24 hours -- a deadline that expired late Friday.
Attacks
In Ramadi, a city in the heart of the insurgent stronghold known as the Sunni Triangle, gunmen firing from a taxi stand attacked a Marine observation post with small-arms fire shortly after daybreak. Marines killed three of the attackers and destroying the taxi stand.
Insurgents also were blamed for an attack on a natural gas pipeline, which officials said would cut into fuel supplies to a power station north of Kirkuk and curb electricity production. It was not immediately clear how significant the losses would be.
In the Philippines, National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales said dela Cruz was "in safe hands." Reports of dela Cruz's freedom reaching Manila were convincing enough to prompt Arroyo to telephone the hostage's wife with the news, setting off jubilation in the family's hometown.
But the group claiming to hold him told Al-Jazeera that it still had the Filipino.
"The hostage will remain captive and treated as a prisoner under Islam until the last Filipino soldier leaves Iraq July 20 at the latest. ... Or he will be executed," read the letter from the group calling itself the Islamic Army of Iraq, Khalid bin al Waleed Brigade, which was shown on late-night newscasts of the Qatar-based satellite channel. It said it was giving the Philippine government 24 hours to demonstrate that it was serious about withdrawing.
Other kidnappings
The dela Cruz case was the latest in a flurry of kidnappings aimed at weakening support for the U.S.-led occupation.
A Pakistani employee of the U.S. contractor Kellogg, Brown & amp; Root, a Haliburton subsidiary, returned to Islamabad, the capital, Saturday with harrowing tales of having witnessed three beheadings while being held by an extremist group. Amjad Hafeez, 26, said he was taken to a room where two foreigners and an Iraqi were killed with a sword.
Hafeez told The Associated Press the two foreigners were "English-speaking people" who were crying, weeping and begging for their lives. He said they were killed June 27, but there was no confirmation on their identities.
Both an American hostage and a South Korean known to have been killed by the group were reportedly slain before that date.
Response
The conflicting reports on dela Cruz's whereabouts followed a cautiously worded response from the Philippine government to the kidnappers' demands late Wednesday that Manila's small military force be withdrawn within 72 hours.
The Philippine government said its troops would leave "on schedule by Aug. 20," making no mention of ongoing discussions about replacing those soldiers.
It also said nothing about the future of the thousands of Filipinos who provide catering, janitorial, construction and maintenance services for foreign troops in Iraq.
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's group claimed responsibility for kidnapping the Bulgarians, and said Thursday that the men would be killed unless the multinational force released all Iraqi prisoners within 24 hours.
Bulgaria has allied itself with the United States since the fall of the Iron Curtain. It has 480 soldiers serving under Polish command in southern Iraq.
"This is not a demand to the Bulgarian government, but to a third country [the United States], and therefore we cannot even consider it," Bulgarian Foreign Minister Solomon Passy told reporters in the Bulgarian capital Sofia.