Turkey confirms 10 kidnappings in Iraq
Report: Captors threaten beheadings unless al-Sadr aide freed
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 Kidnappers threaten to kill two Americans and one British hostage.
 U.S., Iraqi accounts of Baghdad fighting are at odds.
 The U.S. strategy in Falluja has come under question.
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BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The Turkish Embassy in Baghdad said Sunday that 10 employees of a U.S.-Turkish company were kidnapped in Iraq, a day after the wife of an American held captive in Iraq pleaded for his life.
Arabic-language television news network Al-Jazeera broadcast video Saturday showing kidnappers who threatened to kill the 10 hostages if their company does not withdraw from Iraq within three days.
The Turkish Embassy did not release any information about the hostages or the company.
Al-Jazeera also broadcast video Sunday from a previously unknown group that said it had captured 15 members of the Iraqi national guard.
The group -- calling itself Mohammed ben Abdullah -- gave the authorities 48 hours to release Hazem al-Aaraji, an aide to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr who was detained Saturday night during a raid on his home in Baghdad.
The 15 men in the video were wearing uniforms and had their heads bowed. In Baghdad, Iraqi government officials were not able to confirm that any of their soldiers were missing.
A spokesman for the political wing of al-Sadr's office said neither his Mehdi Army militia nor any other group allied with al-Sadr were linked to the kidnappings, which he denounced as attempts to "tarnish" al-Sadr's image.
"This is a fringe group known by the fact that we have always denounced kidnappings and therefore they are merely fabricating their association to us," spokesman Sayid Ali al-Yasseri said.
News of the kidnappings came a day after the wife of Jack Hensley, one of three Westerners kidnapped Thursday in Iraq, begged for their safety.
"Please let them go," Patty Hensley said Saturday from her home near Atlanta, Georgia. "They need to come home."
Americans Hensley and Eugene Armstrong, and British citizen Kenneth John Bigley, worked on Iraqi reconstruction projects for Gulf Supplies and Commercial Services, a company based in the Middle East.
Al-Jazeera reported Saturday that the group Jihad and Unification is threatening to behead the Westerners in 48 hours unless female Iraqi prisoners are released from Iraq's Um Qasr and Abu Ghraib prisons.
The U.S. military isn't holding any female prisoners at those facilities, a military spokesman working with detention operations in Baghdad said Sunday. (Full story)
Jihad and Unification, which claims loyalty to insurgent leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, has taken responsibility for beheading U.S. businessman Nicholas Berg, South Korean translator Kim Sun-il and a Bulgarian hostage in Iraq.
Apparent decapitations
An Islamist militant Web site posted video Sunday purportedly showing the decapitation of three members of the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP).
In the video, a group calling itself Ansar al-Sunna -- the same group that released video last month showing the purported killings of 12 Nepalese hostages -- said that members of the KDP and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) were traitors serving "Zionists" and "Christian crusaders" fighting against Islam.
The video statement said the three men, all truck drivers, were captured as they were hauling military vehicles near the town of Taji, about 15 miles (24 kilometers) north of Baghdad.
The group said it killed the men "to teach them a lesson they will never forget."
Strike on Falluja
A U.S. airstrike Saturday night targeted a fake checkpoint on the northern outskirts of Falluja apparently used to kidnap and kill Iraqi citizens, according to a coalition news release.
The illegal checkpoint was manned by heavily armed "anti-Iraqi forces" believed to have ties to al-Zarqawi, the statement said.
"Evidence indicates Iraqi citizens have been kidnapped at such checkpoints, taken to outlying areas where they were forced to dig their own graves and then executed," the coalition said.
The statement did not report any casualties as a result of the strike. An official at Falluja General Hospital told CNN that four men were killed in the airstrike. The statement said no Iraqi civilians were reported in the area at the time.
Kirkuk bombing
On Saturday morning, in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, a suicide car bomber killed 19 people and wounded 67 others -- including several national guard troops and recruits, Iraqi police and Health Ministry officials said.
The attack targeted the Iraqi national guard regional headquarters, the officials said.
According to Iraqi officials, the attack vehicle approached the front gate of the headquarters at high speed. National guard troops fired on the vehicle before it exploded.
Other developments
Interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said Sunday that the trial of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein will begin in Iraq as soon as next month and predicted it won't last long. "It's going to be a very transparent and very just trial. We are going to ensure that. But I don't think it's going to take a long time because the evidence against him is so much." (Full story)An Iraqi soldier and a civilian were killed Sunday in a suicide car bombing at a military checkpoint outside Samarra, a U.S. military official in northern Iraq said. The bomber was also killed. Four U.S. soldiers and three Iraqi soldiers were wounded in the attack. Allawi arrived in London, England, Sunday, where he was greeted with a handshake by British Prime Minister Tony Blair at 10 Downing St. The two leaders are expected to discuss the security situation in Iraq and how violence will affect elections scheduled for January. (Full story)A U.S. Marine from Lynnwood, Washington, was killed in action Thursday in Anbar province, the Department of Defense said Saturday. Cpl. Steven A. Rintamaki, 21, was assigned to the 1st Expeditionary Force out of Camp Pendleton, California. Iraq's national carrier, Iraqi Airways, resumed international flights Saturday after 14 years of being grounded by war and sanctions.CNN's Thaira al-Hilli, Faris Qasira, Bassem Muhy and Caroline Faraj contributed to this report.
