by Sam Dagher
BAGHDAD, July 23 (AFP) - Kidnappers seized an Egyptian diplomat in Iraq on Friday as relatives of other hostages begged for the release of their loved ones threatened with death.
The Egyptian embassy confirmed that one of its diplomats had been seized, the latest abduction in a wave of foreign hostage-taking to provide another headache for the interim Iraqi administration.
"Yes, yes sir it is him," First Secretary Bader el-Din el-Desouki told AFP, referring to Mohammed Mamdouh Hilmi Kotb, the third most senior official at the embassy.
The confirmation came minutes after a video tape was broadcast on the Al-Jazeera Arab television network. In it, the captive, named as Kotb, was shown sitting in front of six masked armed men dressed head-to-toe in black with white bandanas around their foreheads.
He was purportedly kidnapped by a group called the Lions of Allah in response to what they described as "Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif's offer to Iraq of his country's security expertise."
Meanwhile, in India, families begged for the safe release of three hostages held in Iraq and pleaded for the government to help, as the foreign minister admitted the crisis was serious.
"They can take every penny I have in lieu of my only son. I am ready to give anything to them to see my son," wept Ram Murti, the father of one of the three Indian truck drivers being held by militants.
The Indians, who along with three Kenyans and an Egyptian are being held by an Iraqi group calling itself Holders of the Black Banners.
In New Delhi, Foreign Minister Natwar Singh said he did not "want to give any false hopes" to the families of the hostages.
"It is a serious situation and has to be dealt with in a sensitive manner," Singh told reporters.
He said India so far had no contact with the abductors, who have threatened to execute the captives one by one if their employer does not pull out of Iraq.
Their employer, Kuwait and Gulf Link Transport, is likely to start ferrying goods only up to the border, transport sources said in Kuwait City.
The firm will issue a statement on Saturday giving its response to the abductors' demands, a company official told AFP.
The kidnappers had threatened to start executing one hostage every 72 hours as of Saturday if their demands are not met but later gave a 48 hour extension of the deadline according to a video broadcast Friday by Al-Jazeera television.
Kenya said it was confident it would secure the release of the three Kenyans after it urged all its citizens there to leave Iraq immediately.
Meanwhile, US planes dropped bombs on a house which the military said it believed linked to Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, in the flashpoint city of Fallujah, just five days after a similar operation killed 11 people.
A hospital in town said it received five wounded, including two children, after the attack which the US military said was coordinated with the interim Iraqi government.
On the political front, interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, on a tour of the Middle East, arrived in neighbouring Syria in a bid to repair often fraught ties with Damascus and curb the alleged flow of foreign fighters across the porous borders.
"We must begin a new fraternal and sincere era of cooperation and coordination after the fall of the dictatorial regime in Iraq and the transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqi people," Allawi told reporters.
But his tough stance on security earned him harsh words from militant Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada Sadr, who reappeared in Kufa, south of Baghdad, for the Friday sermon after a near two-month absence from public view.
"You have proven that you are just an extension of the occupation," said Sadr, who spearheaded a deadly rebellion against foreign troops earlier this year, as young men raised their fists in the air and cheered his name.
"Damn him and damn the occupier."
In further bloodshed, two US soldiers were killed and one wounded when their convoy hit a roadside bomb on Thursday outside Samarra, north of Baghdad, the US military said.
The latest casualties brings to 664 the number of US troops killed in Iraq since the start of the US-led war in March 2003, based on Pentagon figures.
In Baghdad, eight people, including a child who lost a leg, were wounded when the vehicle they were travelling in hit a roadside bomb.
Further north near Taji, nine Iraqis were killed and 10 injured when their van accidently hit a US tank, according to the military.