BAGHDAD, Sept 4 (AFP) - Prominent Iraqi politician Ahmed Chalabi on Saturday said an extremist Sunni Muslim group which is holding two French reporters took one of his bodyguards hostage before assassinating him.
The pan-Arab news network Al-Jazeera aired a video in which the Islamic Army in Iraq claimed responsibility for a failed assassination bid on Chalabi Wednesday that left three of his bodyguards dead and showed a fourth taken hostage.
The video said the hostage had revealed "Ahmed Chalabi's relations with the American Congress and with Iran" before dying of his wounds.
"It's true that they kidnapped one of my bodyguards. But they were lying when they said he died of his wounds. They assassinated him," Chalabi told AFP in Baghdad.
"This is a terrorist act. Those responsible are not Muslims. This situation cannot be tolerated, this area south of Baghdad has to be cleansed of all terrorists," he said.
A source from Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress party said earlier that four INC security guards were wounded on Thursday when they tried to reach the vehicle of their dead colleagues in the restive town of Latifiya, south of Baghdad.
"We asked the government to send a force to Latifiya (a Sunni insurgent stronghold south of Baghdad) to retrieve a vehicle where we believe there are still two bodies but have received no answer.
"We sent a force from the party but they were confronted by gunmen. Clashes erupted and four of our people were wounded," he said.
Chalabi, who escaped unharmed from the assassination attempt, had given reporters an account of the ambush on Thursday.
"I was coming back from Najaf, where I had met with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani the previous day, and when we reached Latifiya, a car started following us and opened fire on our convoy," he said.
Chalabi, a leading figure in the exiled opposition to Saddam Hussein before last year's US-led invasion, fell out of favour with his longtime US sponsors over allegations he had leaked classified intelligence to Iran.
The Islamic Army in Iraq follows the strict Wahabist school of Islam and has already claimed responsibility for several abductions and executions in Iraq, including the killing of Italian reporter Enzo Baldoni last month.
The militant group thought to be based mainly in Fallujah has demanded Paris lift a controversial ban on headscarves in state schools to secure the release of French journalists Georges Malbrunot and Christian Chesnot.