30 Iraqis dead in suicide bombing

Friday December 09, 2005 (1201 PST)

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BAGHDAD: A militant group said on Thursday it had killed a US hostage who, if confirmed, would be the first foreign captive killed in Iraq for four months and the first American in more than a year.

The reported killing came after a suicide bomber killed 30 people in an attack on a crowded bus in central Baghdad, the latest chapter in Iraq’s bloody insurgency just a week before Iraqis vote in parliamentary elections.

A statement posted on a Web site often used by insurgents said the Islamic Army in Iraq killed the security consultant, identified as Ronald Schulz, because the US government had not met its demands, which included freeing all Iraqi prisoners.

"War criminal (US President George W) Bush continues with his arrogance and no one has any value unless they serve his criminal interests, therefore, the American security adviser pig at the Housing Ministry has been killed," the statement said.

The statement’s authenticity could not be verified and no pictures or video accompanied it. The White House and the US embassy in Baghdad both said they had no official confirmation of the report.

If true, Schulz, a 40-year-old electrician who had been working in Iraq before his kidnap on Tuesday, would be the first foreign hostage killed in Iraq since late July, when two Algerians were executed by their captors.

The bombing on the Baghdad bus took the death toll from suicide attacks in the Iraqi capital to 66 in just three days, after a relative lull in recent weeks. Police said Thursday’s bomber boarded the bus as it was about to leave a station for the southern city of Nassiriya and blew himself up. Television pictures showed firefighters pulling charred bodies from the wreckage.

The Americans, who announced the deaths of two more US Marines — one in Baghdad and one in Ramadi — said they are tightening security ahead of the vote. "We are not complacent. The insurgency wants to disrupt the democratic process," Major General Rick Lynch, a spokesman for US forces in Iraq, told Reuters.

An Iraqi militant group calling itself Swords of Truth holding four Western Christian aid workers has said it will kill them if Iraqi prisoners are not freed by Saturday, Al Jazeera television reported.