Iraqi insurgents behead South Korean translator

BAGHDAD — Insurgents beheaded South Korean translator Kim Sun-il, 33, an evangelical Christian who begged for his life, yesterday after his government refused the abductors’ demand that it not send troops to Iraq.

His butchered body was dumped by a roadside. He was the second person to be decapitated in the Middle East in a week and the third since early May.

“It breaks our hearts that we have to announce this unfortunate news,” said the Korean Embassy in Baghdad.

President Bush quickly condemned the killing in Iraq, saying, “The free world cannot be intimidated by the brutal actions of these barbaric people.”

In Seoul, South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun denounced the slaughter of the hostage but reaffirmed his determination to send more troops, saying they were needed to help rebuild the country.

The wave of decapitations spread yesterday to Afghanistan, where government soldiers beheaded four Taliban fighters after guerrillas cut off the heads of an Afghan interpreter for U.S.-led forces and an Afghan soldier, a government commander said yesterday.

Hours after the South Korean translator was killed, U.S. forces fired rockets at a house in the Sunni city of Fallujah, west of Baghdad. Officials described the home as a hide-out of terrorist mastermind Abu Musab Zarqawi, who is thought to be behind two beheadings and a string of suicide bomb attacks.

U.S. officials in Washington were unable to say whether the strike had been successful, but Fallujah residents told the Associated Press that the air strike hit a parking lot, killing three persons and wounding nine.

U.S. soldiers discovered Mr. Kim’s body alongside the road between Baghdad and Fallujah yesterday evening, dashing hopes raised earlier when kidnappers extended the 24-hour deadline, which was issued on a Web site on Sunday.

Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the coalition deputy operations chief, did not identify Mr. Kim, but said the body of “an Asian male” had been found west of Baghdad yesterday evening.

“It appears that the body had been thrown from a vehicle,” Gen. Kimmitt said. “The man had been beheaded, and the head was recovered with the body.”

The killing came just four days after al Qaeda militants in Saudi Arabia beheaded American helicopter technician Paul M. Johnson Jr., 49. Another American, Nicholas Berg, was beheaded in Iraq on May 11.

In the latest case, the insurgents had postponed the killing of Mr. Kim for 24 hours after South Korean officials made contact through intermediaries, seeking to negotiate.

However, the talks broke down when it became clear that the Koreans would not reconsider their decision to deploy 3,000 troops to Iraq, according to South Korea’s Yonhap news agency.

“Our government’s basic spirit and position has not changed,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Shin Bong-kil said in Seoul last night. “We confirm that again because our troop deployment is for reconstruction and humanitarian aid support for Iraq.”

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