Al-Qaeda's branch in Iraq said it had shot dead a senior Interior Ministry official kidnapped last month, and posted a video of the killing on the Internet yesterday. The video showed liaison officer Colonel Riyadh Katei Aliwi sitting on a chair with his hands bound behind his back in front of the black flag of the Al-Qaeda Organisation for Holy War in Iraq. Two masked guerrillas stood by him with machine guns.

"I worked at the Interior Ministry and co-operated with American forces by giving them names and addresses of former army officers," said the colonel, adding that there was widespread torture of prisoners, including women, at his ministry. A guerrilla was later shown shooting him in the head, after reading a statement saying he had been condemned to death by Al-Qaeda’s Islamic court as "an apostate fighting God and his Prophet (Muhammad)".

Meanwhile, a senior Kurdish official survived an assassination attempt in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk. The official, Najat Hassan Karim, a member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, said one of his guards was injured when a roadside bomb targeting his convoy exploded in the ethnically mixed city. "I suspect Islamist guerrillas were behind the attack," Karim said.

Security officials opened fire on a crowd of protesters outside a government building, killing one. Bodyguards for Science and Technology Minister Rashad Mandan Omar fired on a crowd of protesters in front of the ministry's offices demanding their full wages, said Hamid Balasem, an engineer at the ministry. About 50 ministry guards were demonstrating, saying they had only been paid in part.

Guerrillas attacked a police patrol with a roadside bomb in the southern oil city of Basra, injuring one civilian, Lt. Col. Karim Ali Al-Zaydi said. They also damaged an oil pipeline in northern Iraq, halting exports to Turkey.

Note: In addition, a car bomb in Kirkuk injured 16 people, while three Rumanian journalists were kidnapped in Baghdad, almost certainly as a prelude to exerting pressure on Rumania to withdraw its forces from Iraq. French reporter Florence Aubenas, abducted in January, is still missing. The American forces are not dealing effectively with the Sunni Arab rebels, and taking the gloves off is long overdue. The criticism in the Western press and media of “excessive casualties” inflicted on these rebels is untrue and partly responsible for this.