Killers 'acted on Iraqi orders'

The killers of the German reporter Lissy Schmidt and her bodyguard in northern Iraq have been arrested and have confessed to acting on the orders of the Iraqi government, Iraqi Kurdish officials in Ankara said yesterday, Hugh Pope reports from Istanbul.

Zaki Saeed Abbas, 31, and Ismaeel Hama, 35, told their Iraqi Kurdish interrogators that their families had been taken hostage in the Baghdad-controlled town of Kirkuk to force them to carry out attacks on foreigners, including the attack on 3 April against Schmidt.