MOSUL, Iraq, Dec 17 (AFP) - Four people were hauled from their car by masked men in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Friday and killed, witnesses said, adding that one of them may have been a non-Iraqi.
"I was parked in the Yarmuk district when I saw men in two cars attack a taxi from Baghdad," Abdallah Zibeidi, 45, told AFP.
"After taking them out of the vehicle, the attackers shot three men dead and decapitated the fourth," he said, adding that the attack happened at 1:45 pm (1045 GMT).
"I saw the decapitation with my own eyes," he said, and that "the man who was decapitated spoke a foreign language."
"Before the fighters set fire to the car, they found two Kalashnikovs and a pistol which they took. They also searched the men's pockets and took things," he said.
Another witness, Qoteiba Mohammed, said that he heard the taxi driver shouting "I'm an Iraqi, from Baghdad, don't shoot."
"The men then fired and I saw one of the men decapitated."
"After the attackers set fire to the car, we heard ammunition that had apparently been left inside going off," he said.
As night fell, four bodies lay in the road. Masked men in a nearby car forbade anyone from approaching.
Mosul is northern Iraq's largest city, and has been the scene of bloody attacks on Iraqi and US forces in recent months, leading to a fluctuating state of lawlessness.
Over 60 bodies have been found in Mosul, 370 kilometres (250 miles) north of the capital, since the beginning of December, many of them belonging to members of Iraqi security forces executed by insurgents.
12/17/2004 15:40 GMT - AFP