Free the Captives: Witness Against Illegal Detention and Torture

At least 66 people were killed and more than 300 wounded in a series of attacks in Iraq, including 50 dead and 290 injured in a triple car bombing of a Baghdad Shia neighbourhood. Described by US Ambassador Zalmay Khalizad as "a good day in Baghdad", Aljazeera said it was one of the worst days of violence there in recent months.

Sunday's attacks coincided with the announcement that Iraq's parliament would meet on Thursday for the first time since the December elections.

Elsewhere in Baghdad, US forces were fighting a fierce battle with Iraqi fighters in a western neighbourhood. Police said the fighting erupted about 3pm in Khadra.

An AP Television News cameraman reported that a US helicopter landed nearby to evacuate casualties.

It was not known what prompted the fighting or if there were any dead. There was no immediate comment from the US military.

And these blasts came after a night of fierce violence in Baghdad. Officials at Yarmouk Hospital, one of Baghdad's biggest, said they had received at least 20 bodies overnight, all victims of violence. Most had been shot.

Amid the carnage and chaos, there was no news Sunday of the three remaining Christian Peacemaker Team captives.

Among the memorial tributes to our friend Tom Fox, the Christian Peacemaker slain in captivity, some truly sloppy, embarrassingly bad online journalism appeared at Newsweek Online. Rod Norland's lead story, "The Missing," piled error upon error.

We do not normally spend time on press criticism here. But when Norland starts his piece by describing Fox as a "missionary," this is a serious problem.

"Missionary" is a "fighting word" in a mainly Muslim society like Iraq, and the CPT workers have scrupulously avoided any hint of such. To be sure, they are people of deep faith, as was Tom Fox. But this is manifested in their actions, not by "missionary" efforts to make converts. This is not only sound theology; in Iraq, it is also wise security practice.

Describing Fox as a "missionary" endangers the remaining 3 captives, AND the other CPT team members still working in Baghdad. We appeal to Newsweek to correct its story quickly. Newsweek can be reached at WebEditors@newsweek.com.

Further on, Norland inaccurately calls Fox's group the Christian Peacekeeper Team, and then compounds the inaccuracy by calling CPT a "Quaker pacifist group." CPT is actually an ecumenical group, which includes Quakers, but was founded by Anabaptists out of the Mennonite and Brethren churches.

Further, Norland goes beyond the available news reports when he asserts, without citing a source, that Fox was found with his throat "savagely cut" and a gunshot wound to the head. However, the most detailed reports publicly available do not mention throat slitting, and include marks of beating, and gunshot wounds to both head and chest. These gruesome details may seem irrelevant, but they are not. It is unhelpful to make Fox's suffering seem more brutal than we currently know it to have been.