2 Killed in Northern Iraq Violence

[leftchick]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=540&ncid=716&e=1&u=/ap/20041218/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq

<snip>


The American contractors, employed by Florida-based Cochise Security Inc. to dispose of Saddam-era munitions in the northern city of Beiji, were wounded in an early morning blast. Two of the wounded were hospitalized. Three Cochise employees were killed in two separate April attacks in Beiji, 155 miles north of Baghdad.


Gunmen killed two men, apparently Iraqis, in execution-style slayings in Beiji, police Capt. Hakim Ali said. Police Both wore civilian clothes while one had his hands tied behind his back. Contractors and Iraqi security forces supporting the U.S.-led coalition have been targeted by insurgents bent on derailing Iraq's reconstruction.


An Iraqi militant group calling itself the "Jihad Brigades" claimed responsibility in a video posted on a Web site Saturday for the slaying of two American contractors on Dec. 8. Joseph Wemple, a builder from Orlando, Fla., and his boss, Dale Stoffel, vice president for international development for CLI USA, died in the ambush outside Baghdad. CLI USA is a Pennsylvania-based engineering-construction contractor.


"A group of Jihad Brigades' fighters set a trap on the Taji Camp road for members of the Pentagon (news - web sites) and the American intelligence agency, the CIA (news - web sites), and those who had close ties with the American President Bush (news - web sites)," a masked man said, sitting at a table and reading from a statement. A masked, armed man stood behind him. The video showed