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April 1, 2003, Daily Record WAR IN THE GULF: WE PRAYED FOR A MIRACLE.. 30 MINUTES LATER SCOTS SOLDIERS SAVED OUR LIVES Gethin Chamberlain In Southern Iraq TWO civilian truck drivers held for 10 days by Saddam Hussein's fanatics were rescued by the Black Watch yesterday. Kenyans David Mukuria and Jakubu Kamau were beaten, blindfolded, bound hand and foot and starved by their captors. They had to listen to the Iraqis discussing whether to kill them. But their ordeal ended when the kidnappers fled from advancing Scots troops and the Black Watch found them abandoned in a school at Al Zubayr, south of Basra. Jakubu, of Nairobi, hugged his rescuers last night as he relived his nightmare. He said: "I was sure we were going to die. "I saw a man with his finger on the pin of a grenade as they argued about whether to kill us. "This morning I said to David, We must pray for a miracle.' "So we prayed and 30 minutes later the door swung open and there were two British soldiers standing there. "God must have given them the power to save us. It really was a miracle that they came." The drivers were seized after becoming separated from a convoy. They had delivered supplies to US troops in Iraq and were returning to Kuwait. David, 53, said: "We lost the way. The convoy switched off the lights and were driving too fast." The pair were lost outside Basra when an Iraqi appeared in the road with a torch. "He asked us where we were going," David said. "We said Kuwait' and after that 20 people came to us with their guns. "They wore civilian clothes. "They beat us, tied our hands and feet and covered our eyes. They took everything we had. "They kept us there for 10 days. We had no food or water, nothing. "We could not see them but we heard them talking. Some of them were speaking in English. "Some of them said, Kill them', some of them said no. We just prayed and prayed." David and Jakubu, 37, also had to suffer the humiliation of being paraded as "prisoners of war" on Iraqi and Arab TV. Their captors grinned and made gestures in the background as the pair were filmed. But the Iraqis were not laughing when the Black Watch moved in. They fled, leaving David and Jakubu in a darkened classroom. Local people tipped off the Black Watch that prisoners were being held in the school on the east side of Al Zubayr. Two Warrior armoured vehicles were sent to the scene. Soldiers sprinted in, kicking down doors, expecting resistance. But they found only a cache of weapons, ammunition and discarded Iraqi army uniforms, and the two relieved Kenyans. Corporal Stewart Robson, 38, and Lance Corporal Gavin Dodd, 23, were first into the building. They found the hostages in the eighth room they searched. Corporal Robson, of Newcastleton, Roxburghshire, said: "We had no idea what we might come up against but we knew we had to get in quickly to free the hostages. "They were in a room with blacked-out windows, so they had trouble adjusting to the light. "They said they had been beaten and showed us the marks on their wrists where their hands had been tied." Lance Corporal Dodd added: "We've seen so much death and suffering out here, it was good to be involved in a story with a happy ending." David and Jakubu were working as contractors for a Saudi firm. America insists the use of civilian drivers in a war zone is not unusual. The hostages were recovering last night at the Black Watch base west of Al Zubayr. But they are ready to go back to work - if they get a better escort next time. "We are not afraid," said David. "We ask God to bless the people who took us." Al Zubayr, once an enemy stronghold, is now under British control. No Iraqi attacks have been reported in 24 hours. Work has begun to get food, water and medicine to civilians. And the troops are learning how Saddam's henchmen lived in luxury while the people starved. Soldiers seized a headquarters of Saddam's Baath Party outside Basra yesterday, smashing through the wall in a Warrior and storming the complex. The British found store rooms crammed with meat and vegetables, cosy bedroom suites with TVs, expensive bottles of malt whisky and even a bar and snooker table. Five suspected Baathists were arrested. The troops told local people all the HQ's bounty belonged to them, then stood by as hungry families swarmed into the building to loot it. Captain Alex Cartwright said: "Normally, we would stop looting . But in this case we decided it would send a powerful message - we are in control now, not the Baath Party."
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................................................................................................................. Copyright ©2004 Gethin Chamberlain. All rights reserved. |
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