IRAQ Group says it has Pakistani hostages

Kidnappers of seven drivers extended the deadline for meeting their demands.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- A suicide bomber detonated a car filled with explosives, mortars and rockets today near the gates of a U.S. base in the northern city of Mosul, killing an Iraqi guard, a woman and a child, the military said. Three American soldiers were injured by the blast.
A militant group, meanwhile, released a video on pan-Arab TV station Al-Jazeera saying it had taken hostage two Pakistanis working for U.S. forces and sentenced them to death because their country was discussing sending troops to Iraq. It was latest in a wave of abductions of foreigners designed to force their countries to rethink sending troops to Iraq.
In a separate video aired by Arab stations today, kidnappers extended a deadline for their demands to be met for the release of seven foreign drivers abducted in Iraq.
Explosion
In Mosul, employees leaving the American base, located at a converted airport, said they saw the bomber drive a vehicle to the gates before it exploded, setting nearby cars on fire.
"It was a suicide operation," base employee Imad Joseph told the Associated Press.
U.S. military spokeswoman Capt. Angela M. Bowman said a woman and a child standing near the explosion were killed, as well as an Iraqi guard. Three U.S. soldiers and two Iraqi guards were injured in the attack, she said.
"We had a truck bomb explode here this morning at 8:02 a.m. about 50 meters [yards] from the main gate at the Mosul airfield," Bowman said in a statement.
"The pickup truck was loaded with 122 mm rockets and 60 mm mortars. The rockets and mortars did not explode when the truck itself detonated," she said.
U.S. bomb disposal experts were sent to defuse the unexploded munitions.
Mosul has been the scene of numerous terrorist attacks, including two car bombings in January and June that each killed nine people.
Other violence
In Basra, insurgents killed two Iraqi women today working as cleaners with British forces in southern Iraq and seriously injured two others, police and hospital officials said.
Also today, attackers shot and killed a senior Interior Ministry official and two of his bodyguards in a drive-by shooting at the official's Baghdad home, according to the Interior Ministry.
Col. Musab al-Awadi, the ministry's deputy chief of tribal affairs, and his guards had just left the house in al-Baya neighborhood when the gunmen drove up and shot them, according to Sabah Kadhim, an Interior Ministry spokesman.
Kidnapping
A group calling itself the Islamic Army in Iraq announced today that it had kidnapped the two Pakistanis and an Iraqi contract driver.
The video aired on Al-Jazeera briefly showed the three men and included a statement by the militant group saying it had issued a death sentence against the two Pakistanis. The group did not say when it would kill the men.
The Pakistani government had declared the two men, Raja Azad, 49, an engineer, and Sajad Naeem, 29, a driver, missing over the weekend.
In part of the video, several identity cards belonging to the hostages were shown, including one bearing the name of "Sajad Naeem." There was also a photograph of three men -- at least one appeared to be one of the Pakistani hostages -- standing with Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, a former senior U.S. military official in Iraq.
Azad and Naeem worked for the Kuwait-based al-Tamimi group in Baghdad, said Masood Khan, a spokesman for Pakistan's Foreign Ministry.
The men went missing in Iraq on Friday when a convoy of two trucks was attacked, one of Azad's cousins, Amjad Youseaf, told Pakistani television station, Geo.
The statement by the militant group said it was imposing the death sentence on the men in part because of Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf's statements about the possibility of sending troops to Iraq. The statement also warned the Kuwaiti firm to stop doing business in Iraq or it would kill more of its employees.
Insurgents killed
On Sunday, U.S. and Iraqi troops backed by heavy artillery and helicopters killed 15 insurgents in fighting that began in palm groves and ended in dusty streets of a city north of Baghdad as violence surged throughout the country.
A raid Sunday against insurgents in Buhriz, a former Saddam stronghold about 35 miles north of Baghdad, turned into a five-hour battle between militants and U.S. and Iraqi forces.