Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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Reporter abducted in Iraq pleads for release in video By RAWYA RAGEH THE ASSOCIATED PRESS BAGHDAD, Iraq - A French journalist abducted nearly two months ago pleaded for help in a video that surfaced Tuesday, saying she was in failing health. South of Baghdad, more than 2,000 people demonstrated at the site of a car bombing that killed 125 people, chanting “No to terrorism!” An Internet statement purportedly by Abu Musab al Zarqawi s al-Qaida in Iraq group claimed responsibility the bombing. The video of Florence Aubenas, 43, a veteran war correspondent for the leftist daily Liberation, was dropped at the offices of an international news agency in Baghdad, and it was not possible to verify when it was made. Aubenas and her Iraqi translator, Hussein Hanoun al Saadi, were last seen leaving her Baghdad hotel on Jan. 5. Ar»rv»arincx niL _j i. . —I i k-«uu aiuuv 111 front of a maroon-colored background, Aubenas, her hair uncombed, grasped her knees with her arms as she spoke. She said she was in bad health and pleaded with French lawmaker Didier Julia to help win her release. Please Jielp me, my health is very bad, she said in English. “Please, it’s urgent now. 1 ask especially Mr. Didier Julia, the French deputy, to help me. Please Mr.^Julia help me, it’s urgent, help me.” Julia, a maverick lawmaker from President Jacques Chirac’s governing party, caused an uproar last year when he helped mediate the release of kidnapped French journalists Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot. The two were freed in December after four months in captivity. Julia was accused by French authorities of meddling in the governments attempts to release the two men, almost sabotaging it. He defended his actions, saying he had hoped his contacts in the Middle East would enable him to make progress where, he claimed, France’s government has failed. The French government on Tuesday warned Julia not to undertake any “personal initiative” on Aubenas’ behalf. The video was the first firm word on the fate of the journalist who previously covered Kosovo, Algeria, Rwanda, and Afghanistan in her 19 years with Liberation. French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier, speaking in London, said the tape will be examined “very carefully.” “What is important is that she is alive,” Barnier said. Liberation asked television and radio networks not to broadcast the appeal for help. The head of support group for Aubenaf expressed happiness at the first sign she might be alive. “We were very afraid,” said Marie-Ange Rodeaud on France-Inter radio. “It’s an unfortunate, but excellent bit of news.” The head of the French press advocacy group Reporters Without Borders said he believed Aubenas’ hostage takers had put her up to appealing to Julia. “I can’t imagine anything else but that that was imposed on her,” group secretary-general Robert Menard said on LCI. Ten more people died from injuries in Monday’s car bombing in Hillah, south of Baghdad, raising the death toll to 125. The attacker detonated the bomb as a group of police and national guard recruits were lining up to take physicals at a medical clinic. At least 141 others were injured in the blast. The Internet statement by al Qaida in Iraq said that the attack targeted a registration center for Iraqi police and National Guardsmen. It made no mention of the medical clinic or a nearby market where a number of people were also killed. It was not immediately possible to verily the authenticity of the statement, which was posted on the Web site that has previously carried al-Qaida material. The statement was also posted under the name of Abu Maysara al-Iraqi, the designated media coordinator of al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born leader of al-Qaida in Iraq. The protesters held the impromptu demonstration on front of the clinic, chanting “No to terrorism!” and “No to Baptism and Wahhabism!” Wahhabism is a reference to adherents of the strict form of Sunni Islam preached by Osama bin Laden, while the Baath party was the political organization that ran Iraq under Saddam Hussein. The demonstrators also demanded that interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi step down. Police prevented people from parking cars in front of the clinic or the hospital, where authorities blocked hospital gates with barbed wire to stave off hundreds of victims’ relatives desperate for information on loved ones. rrovmciai vjov. w ana ai-janaDi said no funeral procession would be held in Hillah due to “security reasons.” He did not elaborate, but police said they feared new attacks. Authorities blocked hospital gates with barbed wire to stave off hundreds of victims’ relatives desperate for information on loved ones. Anxious for news of loved ones, they gathered around lists carrying the names of the dead and injured that were posted on hospital walls, screaming and wailing. They also went through victims’ belongings, including identification cards, left in boxes nearby. Distraught relatives at the hospital morgue placed the dead into coffins and loaded them onto pickup trucks, taking them to city mosques and homes where the bodies will be washed before burial, a Muslim tradition in Iraq. Many of the corpses, charred or dismembered, were unrecognizable, stuffed into white plastic bags. Other bodies lay on the ground in the open because the overwhelmed morgue had no place to store them. AlLABLE nlWriFl^^ I riouf/ Go luHREliSS # USc ' /a© @§^7 0 cm S coo 8 QS Make sure your laptop Is USC wireless-ready Find Out: http://csd4c.edu/wlreless Sign up for wireless training with Computer Services Find Out: http://csd4C.edu/wireless/traininq S. take your laptop to a USC wireless area Find Out: http://csd4c.edu/wireless/map quality gear since 1973 ! 1215 Wayne St. (in the Vista) 799-7571 Mon-Fri 10-6:30 . Sat 10-6 THE ASSOCIATED PRESS French foreign correspondent Florence Aubenas, who was taken hostage, appears on an Iraqi insurgent group's video on Tuesday. Aubenas pleaded for help in her first appearance since she went, missing in early January.