Footage Shows 2 German Captives

BAGHDAD —  Two German engineers abducted in Iraq appeared with their captors in a video aired Friday by Al Jazeera television, the first sign of the pair since gunmen seized them three days earlier.

Elsewhere in Iraq, bombings and shootings claimed at least nine lives, including that of a 13-year-old girl in Basra.

The German captives, seated on a floor with at least four armed men standing behind them, could be seen speaking on the 35-second tape, but there was no audio. The Arabic satellite channel said the video “shows the two men urging their government to help secure their release.”

A handwritten black banner seen in the footage read “Supporters of Tawhid and Sunna Brigades,” a previously unknown group. Tawhid is the Arabic word for monotheism and Sunna refers to the teachings of the prophet Muhammad.

Al Jazeera did not report any demands by the group.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier called the images “distressing,” Associated Press reported, and Chancellor Angela Merkel appealed for the men to be released “without delay.”

The German government has sent a special crisis team to Iraq.

Relatives have identified the engineers as Thomas Nitzschke and Rene Braeunlich. Gunmen in military uniform seized them Tuesday from a car in the northern town of Baiji, where they were working in an Iraqi-owned industrial detergent plant under a contract with their Leipzig-based company.

A timer on the video indicated it was filmed less than two hours after their abduction.

At least three other foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq this month -- two Kenyan telephone engineers who are missing after a Jan. 18 ambush in Baghdad and American journalist Jill Carroll, who was seized Jan. 7 in the capital. There was no word Friday on their fate.

Fighting erupted Friday in Baghdad’s southwestern suburbs as police conducted house-to-house searches and arrested about 60 suspected insurgents. Witnesses said the clashes involved as many as 30 guerrillas, some armed with rocket-propelled grenade launchers, and lasted several hours. News agency photographers reported seeing at least three bodies in the streets.

In the southern city of Basra, a bomb exploded in a bag left in an outdoor market by a man who had stepped out of a police car, killing a 13-year-old girl, witnesses said.

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A special correspondent in Basra contributed to this report.