2d US citizen seized this week

BAGHDAD -- Gunmen kidnapped a Lebanese-American businessman -- the second US citizen seized this week in Baghdad -- and militants released a tape yesterday showing the beheading of an Iraqi officer as a warning to those who deal with ''the infidel" Americans. An unknown group claimed it beheaded three Iraqi National Guardsmen.

Elsewhere, a US soldier was killed and another wounded in a roadside bombing 12 miles south of the capital.

A suicide driver detonated his vehicle at a checkpoint near Baghdad airport, injuring nine Iraqis and prompting US troops to close the main route into the city for hours.

Gunmen killed a senior Oil Ministry official, Hussein Ali al-Fattal, after he left his house yesterday in the Yarmouk district of western Baghdad, police said. Fattal was the general manager of a state-owned company that distributes petroleum byproducts.

The violence served as grim reminder of Iraq's deteriorating security situation, which President Bush must address now that he has won his bid for reelection.

Radim Sadeq, an American of Lebanese origin who worked for a mobile phone company, was grabbed about midnight Tuesday when he answered the door of his home in Baghdad's upscale Mansour neighborhood, officials said. No group claimed responsibility.

It was the second abduction this week in Mansour, where many foreign companies are based. On Monday, gunmen stormed the two-story compound of a Saudi company, abducting six people, including an unidentified American, a Nepalese, a Filipino, and three Iraqis, two of whom were later released. No claim has been made for the kidnappings.

More than 170 foreigners have been kidnapped and more than 30 of them killed in Iraq since Saddam Hussein's regime fell in April last year. At least six of the foreigners were beheaded by followers of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant who has sworn allegiance to Al Qaeda.

As the wave of abductions continues, another militant group, the Ansar al-Sunnah Army, posted a videotape on a website yesterday showing the beheading of a man it said was an Iraqi Army major captured in Mosul.

A statement by the group called Major Hussein Shanoun an ''apostate" and said he confessed to taking part in attacks against insurgents on orders of the Americans.

Just before his death, the victim was shown warning Iraqi soldiers and police soldiers against ''dealing with the infidel troops," meaning the Americans.

In another video, aired yesterday on Al-Jazeera television, a previously unknown group calling itself the Brigades of Iraq's Honorables said it beheaded three Iraqi National Guards, accusing them of spying for the Americans.

The broadcast showed three men holding up what appeared to be army identification cards sitting in front of a hooded man who read a statement.

The video also showed the beheading of the three men, but the network declined to air that footage, the Al-Jazeera newscaster said.

In Jordan, a government spokeswoman said four Jordanian drivers were kidnapped in Iraq and two others were shot at by unknown assailants.

The spokeswoman, Asma Khader, gave no details of the abductions but said two other Jordanians came under fire in the Ramadi area in central Iraq -- a stronghold of Sunni Muslim militants.

Insurgents have stepped up attacks on Iraq's US-trained security forces, who the Americans hope will assume greater responsibility to enable Washington to begin drawing down its forces -- now at their highest levels since the summer of 2003.

More than 85 percent of the estimated 165,700 multinational troops here are Americans, despite US efforts to encourage other countries to share the burden of securing and rebuilding Iraq.

Yesterday, Hungary's prime minister said the country will withdraw its 300 noncombat troops by the end of March. Hungary had agreed to extend their deployment from an original deadline of Dec. 31 so they could help maintain security during elections in January.

Elsewhere, attackers fired a mortar round yesterday at an Iraqi National Guard checkpoint in Najaf's old city, injuring two soldiers, Lieutenant Haidar Hussein said. It was the first such attack in the center of the Shi'ite holy city since a peace agreement last August ended weeks of fighting between US troops and Shi'ite militiamen.

In Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, residents said US soldiers clashed with gunmen yesterday in the city center.

Four Iraqis were killed and two injured, said Ahmed Jadour of the Samarra General Hospital.

A statement distributed yesterday in Samarra warned Iraqis against turning in weapons to the Americans.