Terrorists' video shows executions

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BAGHDAD -- Al Qaeda's arm in Iraq released a video yesterday showing its terrorists executing five captured Iraqi security officers, the latest move in a campaign to intimidate Iraqis and target those who work with U.S.-led forces.

Also yesterday, a U.S. soldier belonging to the Task Force Baghdad was killed and another was wounded in a roadside explosion north of the capital, the military said. No other details were given.

In a surprise visit to northern Iraq, Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage met Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani to discuss this month's crucial elections, Kurdish officials said. State Department officials said Mr. Armitage arrived in Baghdad Friday and met with embassy personnel and with U.S. commander Gen. George Casey before traveling to the Kurdish area.

Ethnic Kurds, who make up about 20 percent of Iraq's 26 million people, are eager to take part in the Jan. 30 vote for a national assembly so that they can play a large role in the drafting of a new constitution and carve out broad autonomy in the future Iraq.

Washington does not want the Kurds pushing for independence -- something that Turkey and Iraq's other neighbors with large Kurdish minorities would reject.

A statement posted on an Islamic Web site along with the video denounced the five slain security officers as "American dogs" and warned other Iraqis they would meet the same fate if they join the security forces. In the video, the five men are seen lined up, their hands bound behind their backs, before being shot from behind on a street in front of passers-by.

Police found two beheaded bodies on a main street in Baghdad's western neighborhood of Adl yesterday, witnesses said. A note with the corpses said they were truck drivers killed for working with the U.S. military.

Insurgents have carried out a string of attacks focusing on Iraqi armed forces in recent weeks, aiming to wreck security ahead of the elections.

The U.S. military and the interim government in Baghdad want the Iraqi police and national guard to provide security for the election, and mass desertions from those forces could scuttle such plans.

The video and statement -- issued by Al Qaeda in Iraq, the group led by Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab Zarqawi -- did not say where the executions took place, but separate photos of the executions indicated they occurred in the insurgent stronghold of Ramadi, west of Baghdad, on Dec. 26.