Gunmen abduct contractor; truck drivers are kidnapped

A tape shows CARE director Margaret Hassan fainting and crying.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Gunmen abducted a Lebanese-American contractor who worked with the U.S. Army from his Baghdad home, Iraqi officials said today, while four Jordanian truck drivers were seized by assailants in a separate kidnapping.
Radim Sadeq, a Lebanese-American contractor with a mobile phone company, was snatched by gunmen when he answered the door of his home in Baghdad's Mansour neighborhood overnight, Lt. Col. Maan Khalaf said.
It was the second abduction this week in upscale Mansour, where many foreign companies are based. On Monday, gunmen stormed the two-story compound of a Saudi company, abducting six people, including an American, a Nepalese, a Filipino and three Iraqis, after a bloody gunbattle that left an Iraqi guard and one of attacker dead.
Car bomb
Also today, a car bomb exploded near a bus carrying airport employees to work in Baghdad, injuring nine people.
Gunmen also killed an Oil Ministry official, Hussein Ali al-Fattal, in a drive-by shooting as he was on his way to work, the ministry said.
More than 160 foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq since Saddam Hussein's regime fell in April last year. Some kidnapping groups seek ransom, while others pursue political motives such as the withdrawal of foreign companies and troops from Iraq. Kidnappers have killed about 30 hostages.
CARE director's fate
Meanwhile, the kidnappers of aid worker Margaret Hassan are threatening to hand her over to Al-Qaida-linked militants notorious for beheading hostages unless Britain agrees within 48 hours to pull its troops from Iraq, an Arabic television station reports.
The threat to Hassan, the Iraq director for CARE International, was made in a videotape received by Al-Jazeera television but not broadcast in its entirety because the station said it was "too graphic."
Instead, it transmitted a segment Tuesday night showing a hooded gunman but without sound. The newscaster said the kidnappers gave Britain 48 hours to meet their demands, "primarily the withdrawal" of British troops.
Otherwise, the 59-year-old Hassan will be handed over to Al-Qaida in Iraq, a group headed by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. His followers have beheaded at least six hostages: three Americans, a Briton, a Japanese and a South Korean.
Meanwhile, there has been no word on an American and two other foreigners -- one Filipino and a Nepalese -- abducted Monday night in Baghdad.
In London, Prime Minister Tony Blair's office and the British Foreign Office both declined to comment on the reported demand. Britain has 8,500 troops in Iraq, the second-largest contingent after the United States.
Tape of Hassan
Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern told his parliament that the full tape showed the Dublin-born Hassan pleading for her life directly to the camera before suddenly fainting.
Ahern, who had not seen the video, said a bucket of water is then thrown over Hassan's head and she is filmed lying wet and helpless on the ground before getting up and crying.
Ahern described the text of the video as "distressing" and said "there were a number of very dangerous and very serious time scales stated."
Hassan, an Irish-British-Iraqi citizen who is married to an Iraqi, was kidnapped last month from her car in western Baghdad. No group has claimed responsibility for her kidnapping and there was no sign on the brief broadcast of any banner identifying who held her.
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