Flurry of hostage releases in Iraq, violence kills nine

BAGHDAD (AFP) - In a rare flurry of good news in Iraq, up to 10 hostages were freed, including two Italian women aid workers, raising hopes for a captive Briton faced with a death threat and two kidnapped French journalists.
But fresh violence raged across Iraq, as nine people were killed in a string of incidents and six US troops were wounded in a car bomb attack in the northern city of Mosul.
Simona Torretta and Simona Pari, both 29, arrived at Rome's Ciampino military airport late Tuesday to be showered with hugs and flowers by their families and colleagues from their aid agency, A Bridge to Baghdad.
Their relatives and Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi boarded the Italian air force plane to welcome them.
The women, who were seized by armed men on September 7 at their Baghdad offices, stepped off the plane smiling broadly and wearing light-coloured long tunics. They crossed the tarmac holding hands and looking relaxed.
Berlusconi, who backed the US-led war to oust Saddam Hussein and has sent some 3,000 Italian troops and police to serve in the US-led coalition in Iraq, described their release as a "moment of joy".
Almost simultaneously, telecom firm Orascom announced that three Egyptians captured last week had also been released.
The three were kidnapped last week in western Iraq, together with another Egyptian and two Iraqis employed by the same company. The others were released late Monday.
Al-Arabiya television reported late Tuesday that another two Orascom employees snatched from Baghdad had also been freed, but this could not be confirmed.
In an uncanny succession of events, the releases confirmed Tuesday came a day after an Iranian diplomat held by the same group detaining two French reporters was set free following a 55-day ordeal.
Hopes of a breakthrough in efforts to release French reporters Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot rose after a purported French envoy told Al-Arabiya television he had seen the pair and a deal had been reached for their release.
"I can confirm that both are in good health, (physically and also) psychologically. After my meeting with them and with the group representing the delegation, we were able to reach" agreement, Philippe Brett told the news channel by phone Tuesday.
But the foreign ministry in Paris promptly denied the claim, saying it was not aware of any such deal.
However, the life of British hostage Kenneth Bigley -- whose two US colleagues were beheaded last week by the Islamist group of Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, the most wanted man in Iraq -- was still hanging in the balance.
His younger brother, Paul Bigley, said the latest releases were a good sign.
"We are all heartened by this. I'm overjoyed for their families. Those wonderful women went through hell and back and so did their loved ones," he told The Times newspaper at his home in the Netherlands.
"I realize that their kidnappers are a different kettle of fish to those holding my brother but they are still baddies," Paul Bigley was quoted as saying.
In Bangkok, Sunee Pansook, the sister of Bigley's Thai wife Sombat, said her family took the latest hostage releases as a sign the captors were open to negotiations and that Bigley could be freed.
A British Muslim delegation said after a 48-hour mission to Baghdad that they had received "very encouraging advices and promises that we hope, inshallah (God willing), will lead to the release" of the 62-year-old engineer.
Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Tony Blair told his Labour party's annual conference on Tuesday in Brighton, England that he refused to apologise for the Iraq war, as he linked the future of Iraq to Britain's national security.
"I can't, sincerely at least, apologise for removing Saddam," said Blair, who nevertheless regretted that intelligence on the deposed president's alleged weapons of mass destruction -- used to justify the war -- was flawed.
Five Iraqi intelligence security agents were killed late Tuesday near the southern city of Basra after freeing a hostage who was then recaptured by assailants, the local intelligence chief said.
Commander Jassem Darraji told AFP that the squad was about to hand over a hostage to his family when their convoy came under fire north of Basra.
The Mosul car bomb exploded late Tuesday as a US convoy drove near the city's main university, wounding six US soldiers, all but one of them lightly, said American military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Paul Hastings.
Two Iraqi security guards were also wounded in the attack, the latest of a string of deadly ambushes and bomb attacks in the country's third largest city.
Also in Mosul, the local coordinator for the World Vision NGO was assassinated overnight by unknown attackers, police told AFP.
The US military, meanwhile, said it shot dead an Iraqi civilian early Wednesday after he failed to stop at a checkpoint near the restive city of Baquba, north of Baghdad.
In Baghdad, one person was killed and another wounded as they were planting a bomb in the central Sunni neighbourhood of Aazamiyah, a witness said.
And in the insurgent stronghold of Ramadi, west of Fallujah, a policeman was shot dead early Wednesday, medics said.
Amid tight security, thousands of Iraqi Shiites marched from Baghdad to the holy city of Karbala on Wednesday to mark the birth of Imam Mehdi, believed to be the messiah in their faith.