We have controlled the situation down here while the Americans seemed to have ruined it up there.”Pte Ian Gordon, 19, from Edinburgh, added: “They are more hostile towards coalition forces up there. In Basra and the south, there is militia trouble but smaller numbers. We’ve been given extra training in different situations we may face, and different environments. It wouldn’t have bothered me so much if I had been told when they first knew about it, but finding out just days before I was to go home is hard to take.”We have heard a lot about the ‘Triangle of Death’, which makes everyone nervous because it seems much worse up there than it has been down here. Private Manny Lynch, 19, from Fife, said: “I’m nervous and angry. I was supposed to be going home last Monday and I only found out I was being deployed four days before. Black Watch soldiers being airlifted north by Hercules C-130 transporters from their base in Basra were promised they would be pulled out of Iraq in early December after their 30-day tour.But despite the pledge by Colonel James Bashall, chief of staff of the British-led Multinational Division in Iraq, many soldiers are upset.

The area is a hotbed of Islamic terrorists, where rocket attacks, suicide bombers and kidnappings are common. As the Black Watch set up camp at their new base in the dangerous zone south of Baghdad yesterday, their soldiers voiced anger over their deadly new mission.
Commanders refused to confirm the exact location for the controversial deployment until the 850-strong battle group had secured its base of operations 30 miles from the capital. He was taken captive after being seen wandering around Baghdad with a backpack asking for hotel accommodation Mr Koda had left Japan for a year-long trip.. Like Mrs Hassan, the woman is married to an Iraqi.The Japanese captive, Shosei Koda, is being held by a group headed by Jordanian militant leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. abandon your weapons and go home and beware of supporting the apostate Crusaders or their followers, the Iraqi government, or you will find death.”A statement on the website said: ” We will not forget about the blood of our elderly, women and children that are shed daily in Fallujah, Samarra, Ramadi and elsewhere on your hands and the hands of those you work with.”Ansar al-Sunnah was also responsible for the murders of 12 Nepalese hostages in August.The kidnapping of the Polish woman, whose identity remains undisclosed, comes after the abduction of Margaret Hassan, the head of the charity Care International in Baghdad. In the video, each man was made to read out his name and that of his unit before they were murdered.

A voiceover from the head of the militant group, Ansar al-Sunnah, said: “Repent to God … Eleven Iraqi soldiers taken hostage by insurgents have been murdered. A video released by their captors showed one man being beheaded and 10 others being shot.
Another video released yesterday featured an abducted Polish woman, while the deadline for a Japanese kidnap victim is due to run out today.Their captors – separate groups of militants – have demanded that the respective countries of the two hostages withdraw their troops from Iraq.The killings of the soldiers, members of the Iraqi National Guard, follow the capture and execution of 49 army recruits last weekend.Iyad Allawi, the interim Prime Minister, blames US forces of “gross negligence” on that occasion for allowing the soldiers to go to their deaths unarmed and unprotected.The men were seized on a highway between Baghdad and Hilla earlier in the week. Which is more perhaps than can be said for newspaper endorsements.. On Wednesday, Rush Limbaugh seemed about to blow a gasket in outrage at the report, as he saw it, a calculated effort to torpedo Mr Bush’s campaign. Clearly news about Iraq’s explosives are having an effect on this most finely poised of campaigns.