Kidnapped American shown

BAGHDAD -- A distraught American hostage appeared on television with automatic weapons trained on his head yesterday -- a day that recalled the darker periods of Iraq's insurgency as bombs killed at least 14 people and US Marines clashed with insurgents near the Syrian border.

As insurgent attacks have diminished since national elections Jan. 30, Iraqi and US officials have focused attention largely on shaping the country's political future and have expressed hope that the insurgency was winding down. But a videotape broadcast on Al-Jazeera television showed a scene more typical of last summer and fall: a foreigner pleading for his life as gunmen pointed weapons at him.

Jeffrey J. Ake, 47, of LaPorte, Ind., apparently reading from a statement on a wooden desktop in front of him, asked the United States to start a dialogue with Iraqi insurgents, to start withdrawing its forces from Iraq and to save his life, according to Al-Jazeera. In one hand, he held open what seemed to be a US passport, and in the other, an identification card.

The White House announced that authorities were monitoring the situation but would not negotiate for Ake's release. Ake was kidnapped Monday from a water treatment facility near Baghdad where he worked as a contractor on a reconstruction project.

Meanwhile, four other US contractors were among those wounded yesterday by a car bomb that killed five Iraqis in Baghdad. The victims were traveling between the capital and the nearby airport in a Defense Department convoy when the bomb detonated.

Al Qaeda in Iraq, the insurgent group led by a Jordanian guerrilla, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement posted via the Internet.

In northern Iraq, a bomb killed at least nine Iraqi police officers as they were defusing another explosive device planted beneath an oil pipeline near Kirkuk.

The slain men were members of an Iraqi antisabotage unit for oilfields, police Colonel Afran Hannah said.

They had successfully disabled one bomb, apparently a decoy, only to have a second, hidden bomb explode nearby. Five Iraqis were also wounded.

And on Iraq's long border with Syria, US Marines battled rebels claiming ties to Al Qaeda for a third straight day.

The US military said yesterday that Marines had killed 30 insurgents Monday and Tuesday as they repeatedly tried to overrun an isolated Marine outpost and a nearby Iraqi Army outpost.

The attacks on Camp Gannon, at the town of Husaybah, started Monday with simultaneous assaults by gunmen and detonation of car bombs, including a fire truck packed with explosives.

Insurgents said fighters from Zarqawi's organization and the Iraqi insurgent group known as Mohammad's Army were fighting together against US forces in the nearby city of Qaim.

Fighters asserted in a statement that 23 of their men had been killed, including 14 from Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Kuwait, and other foreign countries.

US Marines in Qaim took up positions on rooftops and called over loudspeakers for the city's people to surrender the armed men hiding among them, witnesses said.

The witnesses said Iraqi security forces had abandoned the city.

''I saw two police cars driven by masked men," said Abdul Sattar Kubaisi, 48, who watched the scene from behind the gate of his home. ''The policemen left the city, and the armed men took their weapons and cars that they left in the police stations."

A statement posted in mosques in Qaim, purportedly by Al Qaeda in Iraq, threatened attacks on US bases and other targets around Iraq if US forces did not withdraw from the city in 12 hours.

Zarqawi's group has staged two large-scale attacks on US forces in the past two weeks, a tactical shift that has been described as bid to reinvigorate the insurgency. The first military-style attack was on the US-run Abu Ghraib prison, west of Baghdad.

Before Al-Jazeera aired the video of Ake, US officials had released no details regarding his identity. Ake is president and CEO of Equipment Express, whose products include machines that fill water bottles, the Associated Press reported.

In LaPorte, Ind., a yellow ribbon was tied around a tree outside Ake's one-story brick house, and an American flag fluttered on a pole from the home.

LaPorte Police Chief David Gariepy met with Ake's family and called it ''a terrible situation."

''We have to keep them in our thoughts and pray for his safe return," Gariepy said. ''It devastates all of us as Americans when someone from our country is involved in something like this."

Ake was the first American of solely US citizenship taken since November; an Iraqi American was kidnapped last month with three Romanian journalists and remains in captivity.

More than 200 foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq in the past year. Dozens have been killed, including several Americans.

Meanwhile, President Viktor Yushchenko of Ukraine yesterday signed a decree ordering his country's troops to leave Iraq by year's end, finalizing a decision that will pull out the fourth-largest non-US contingent here.

The withdrawal was one of the new president's campaign promises.

The Bush administration also moved yesterday to freeze the finances of a Jordanian it says has provided financial support to Zarqawi.

The US government contends that Bilal Mansur al-Hiyari became acquainted with Zarqawi in Afghanistan in 1989.

And in Iraq, the US military announced the April 6 arrest of Walid Jassim Muhammad Jurmat, an alleged member of the Saraya Al Jihad group, which has ties to Zarqawi.

In a statement, the military said he was wanted for his connection to suicide car bombs, weapons and ammunition trafficking, as well as the organization of insurgent supply routes in and out of Ramadi.

Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.