by Kamal Taha
BAGHDAD, July 30 (AFP) - A deadline set by insurgents to kill an Indian hostage in Iraq at 1500 GMT Friday passed without any news of the threat being carried out, after relatives and a tribal mediator issued 11th-hour appeals for his release.
As the number of foreigners believed abducted across the country rose to at least 25, India's top diplomat in Iraq said there had been no word on the fate of the threatened hostage shortly after the deadline expired.
"The Indian embassy has no confirmation about the lifting of the deadline or the status of the hostages as of now," Brij Mohan Tyagi told AFP.
India had said it was working "round the clock" to obtain the release of three of its citizens after the kidnappers issued their gruesome threat and a video showing a cocked rifle being held to the head of one of their captives.
Militants holding the three drivers, along with three Kenyans and an Egyptian, have demanded that their Kuwaiti employer quit Iraq.
The father of the threatened Indian hostage, Ram Murti, made a last-ditch appeal for Antarayami's life from his home village.
"I appeal to the people who have abducted my son to please release (him) as he is just a poor man," said Murti, from Dehlan in northern Himachal Pradesh state.
Iraqi go-between Sheikh Hisham al-Dulaimi said he was optimistic the Islamic militants would not follow through on their threat.
"In my name and in the name of humanity and religious leaders, I appeal to the Secret Army - Black Banners Battalion, to rethink the matter and not to execute the hostages," he told AFP before the deadline expired.
The Kuwaiti company has sent a representative to Baghdad and would be in touch with him later in the day, Dulaimi said, but there was no indication that the haulage firm was ready to cease its operations in Iraq.
"They just called me half-an-hour ago and told me that one of their representatives, a fellow by the name of Mahdi Saleh, was in Baghdad and that he would be getting in touch with me today," he said.
The company operates large-scale transport services to Iraq and has a number of contracts with US-led coalition forces there, according to company sources.
"I am really hopeful that they will not execute their threat," Dulaimi said earlier.
"I trust in the tolerance of Iraqis and ... I am expecting a positive outcome," he said, despite admitting that he had not yet had a reply to his call for mercy.
The hostage-takers had earlier backed off from a threat to start killing the seven truckers one-by-one every 72 hours from 1600 GMT Monday.
Holding talks with Iraqi and US officials in Baghdad, US Secretary of State Colin Powell was forced to admit the wave of kidnappings in Iraq had a "deterring effect" on reconstruction and the multinational coalition.
"There is nothing romantic about this. There is nothing justified about this. The world must stand united," he said.
At least 25 foreigners have been reported snatched or missing in Iraq, after a colleague was quoted as saying Friday that two Syrian truck drivers were abducted near the infamous Abu Ghraib prison west of Baghdad.
In Kenya, Somali warlord Musa Sudi Yalahow appealed to followers of alleged Al-Qaeda operative Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi to release his countryman, saying he was driven to the Gulf nation by poverty.
"Without interfering with the conflict in Iraq, I appeal to the kidnappers of the Somali truck driver to release him immediately and unconditionally," Yalahow told AFP.
Meanwhile, Sunni Muslim clerics from the country's influential Committee of Muslim Ulema called on the killers of two Pakistani hostages to return the bodies of their victims to the authorities in Islamabad for a Muslim burial.
They said the Pakistani embassy in Baghdad had approached them for help.