3 Czech Journos Freed in Iraq

By: Louis Meixler, Associated Press Writer (AP) Three Czech journalists and a Syrian-Canadian aid worker were freed by their captors, but new kidnappings were reported Friday of a man from the United Arab Emirates and a Danish businessman, the latest in a wave of abductions accompanying violence in Iraq.

The Arab man was pulled from his hotel by gunmen disguised as police in the southern city of Basra on Thursday night, according to Iraqi police official Col. Khalaf al-Maliki and the hotel's owner, who asked not to be identified.

The victim was carrying a passport from the United Arab Emirates that had U.S. travel stamps in it, leading to earlier incorrect reports that he was American, al-Maliki said. It was not immediately clear whether the abduction was connected to the wave of political kidnappings by insurgents across Iraq, or simply for criminal reasons.

The three Czechs had been missing since Sunday after checking out of their hotel to leave for Jordan by taxi.

"We all are in good condition," reporter Vit Pohanka told Czech Radio from the Czech Embassy in Baghdad, speaking along with Czech Television reporter Michal Kubal and cameraman Petr Klima.

After being held in an unknown location northwest of Baghdad, the Czechs were brought to the outskirts of the city Friday, and they took a taxi to the Czech Embassy, Pohanka said.

Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin said in Toronto that Iraqi militants have released a Syrian-Canadian aid worker Fadi Fadel, who was abducted in the southern city of Najaf on April 7.

The Syrian-born Fadel, 33, talked to his family in Montreal on Friday morning.

"He said, 'Hi mom. I'm out. I'm coming back. I'm OK,'" Roueida Fadel told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.'s French language network. Her son had been working for the New York City-based International Rescue Committee.

A Chinese citizen also was released Friday, two days after being taken captive, said Muthanna Harith, a member of the Islamic Clerics Committee, the highest Sunni organization in Iraq. There had been no public reports of the Chinese man being taken.

The clerics' committee had also successfully helped free three Japanese civilians, including a photographer, on Thursday. That same day, however, an Italian security guard was killed in captivity.

The Danish Foreign Ministry did not identify the Dane who was reported kidnapped.

"A Danish national likely is being held back in Iraq," the Danish Foreign Ministry said in a statement from Copenhagen. "No Iraqis or Iraqi groups have contacted Danish authorities."

Danish television station DR-1 reported that the victim was a businessman in his 30s working on a sewage project in Iraq. The man was traveling from Basra to Baghdad when he was taken captive in Taji, 20 miles north of Baghdad, DR-1 said.

Denmark, which backed the U.S.-led war to oust Saddam Hussein, has 410 troops in Basra and nearby Qurnah, 250 miles southeast of Baghdad. There are also a dozen Danish police officers in Basra.

Russia sent another plane Friday to evacuate another 118 Russian workers from Iraq, a day after around 300 others were pulled out. But Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Yegorov said many other workers chose to stay.

Russia's two-day evacuation effort began Thursday after the abduction of three Russians and five Ukrainians on Monday. They were released unharmed the next day.

Around two dozen foreigners have been abducted in the past week. The kidnappings have coincided with intense violence around the country and most are believed to have been carried out by anti-U.S. insurgents.

Most of the abducted foreigners were taken on roads west and south of Baghdad, where gunmen have attacked convoys and battled U.S. troops.

The Chinese man was an employee of a Chinese company traveling by car from Jordan to Iraq and was stopped by several Iraqis at a checkpoint, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said. The ministry, in a report on its Web site, said the man was questioned and released "after a short period."

At least 17 foreigners, according to an Associated Press count, remain unaccounted for following a wave of abductions that accompanied the worst violence Iraq has seen since the U.S.-led invasion on March 20, 2003.

"We haven't accounted for all the missing," Lt. Gen. Lance Smith, deputy commander, U.S. Central Command, told NBC's "Today" show Friday. "We are not going to negotiate with these hostage-takers but we are taking any information we have available to us and we are out looking to try to locate them and take the appropriate action when we get the intelligence."

American experts are working to determine whether four bodies discovered west of Baghdad were the remains of private U.S. contractors missing since an April 9 convoy attack.

One of the missing -- Thomas Hamill, a 43-year-old truck driver from Mississippi -- is known to have been abducted.

The freed Japanese civilians arrived in Dubai Friday for medical checkups before returning home.

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who refused to withdraw the 500 Japanese troops as the captors had demanded, called the release a "great relief," but he also cautioned that two more Japanese, both journalists, may have been kidnapped.

On Thursday, kidnappers executed an Italian -- the first known killing of a hostage in the current crisis. His captors warned they would kill three other Italians in their custody unless Rome withdraws its troops. All four Italians were security guards working for a U.S.-based company.

With 3,000 troops, the Italian contingent is the third largest after those from the United States and Britain.