- BAGHDAD (Reuters) -- An Iraqi
group led by al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi beheaded American Eugene
Armstrong and posted a video of the killing on the Internet on Monday.
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- The hostage's body was later recovered and identified,
a U.S. official in Washington told Reuters.
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- The video, broadcast on an Islamist site, showed a masked
man sawing the construction contractor's head off with a knife.
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- It also showed the banner of Zarqawi's Tawhid and Jihad
group, which said it had kidnapped him along with another American and
a Briton from their house in central Baghdad on Thursday. The other two
now face death within 24 hours.
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- In the video, five armed and masked men stood around
the hostage, who was blindfolded and dressed in orange overalls typical
of U.S. jails and associated around the world with images of Muslims detained
at Guantanamo Bay.
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- After reading a lengthy statement, during which the hostage
sat rocking on the floor, one of the men decapitated him.
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- They said they had killed Armstrong because the U.S.
authorities had failed to free women prisoners in Iraqi jails. They gave
another day for the United States to do so, or Jack Hensley and Briton
Kenneth Bigley would also be killed.
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- President Bush, however, vowed to keep up the pressure:
"We will stay on the offensive against them," he said at an election
event in Derry, New Hampshire, before the video.
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- "They will behead people in order to shake our will.
These people are ideologues of hatred."
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- Tawhid and Jihad said in an Internet posting on Saturday
it would kill all three men unless Iraqi women were freed from Abu Ghraib
and Umm Qasr jails.
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- The U.S. military says no women are being held in the
two prisons specified, but that two are in U.S. custody. Dubbed "Dr
Germ" and "Mrs Anthrax" by U.S. forces, they are accused
of working on Saddam Hussein's weapons programs and are in a special prison
for high-profile detainees.
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- The hostages' families have appealed for their release.
The men were seized from their house in an upscale neighborhood of Baghdad
early on Thursday morning by a group of gunmen.
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- Zarqawi's group has claimed responsibility for most of
the bloodiest suicide bomb attacks in Iraq since the fall of Saddam.
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- It has already beheaded several hostages, including U.S.
telecoms engineer Nicholas Berg in May and South Korean driver Kim Sun-il
in June.
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- MORE THAN A DOZEN HOSTAGES
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- The group released Filipino captive Angelo de la Cruz
in July after Manila bowed to its demands to pull out troops.
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- The United States has offered $25 million for information
leading to the death or capture of Zarqawi, a Jordanian, and has launched
a series of air strikes on his suspected hideouts in the rebel-held town
of Falluja, west of Baghdad.
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- The latest strike was on Monday afternoon, residents
said. Doctors said at least two people were killed.
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- Another Islamist group freed 18 Iraqi soldiers it had
threatened to kill, but more than a dozen other hostages are still facing
death unless demands from their captors are met.
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- Two French journalists were seized a month ago, and two
female Italian aid workers were kidnapped in broad daylight in central
Baghdad earlier this month.
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- A statement purportedly from the group holding the Frenchmen
said at the weekend they were o longer captives but had agreed to stay
with the group for some time to cover it. France said on Monday it was
preparing for a long wait for their release.
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- Another group has threatened to kill 10 workers from
a U.S.-Turkish firm unless their company stopped doing business in Iraq
within three days. Most of the workers seized are believed to be Turkish.
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- On Sunday a guerrilla group said it had captured 18 Iraqi
soldiers and would kill them unless authorities freed an aide to Shi'ite
cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, Hazem al-Araji, within 48 hours. Araji was arrested
on Saturday night by U.S.-backed forces, Sadr's supporters said.
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- The release of the Iraqi soldiers -- shown on a video
given to Reuters on Monday -- followed an appeal by a Sadr aide, Ali Smeisim,
for the hitherto unknown group, the Mohammad bin Abdullah Brigades, to
free them.
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- It was not immediately clear if Araji had been released.
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- One U.S. soldier was killed when guerrillas attacked
a U.S. patrol north of Baghdad on Monday, the U.S. military said.
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- In the northern city of Mosul, a car rigged with explosives
blew up killing all three inside the vehicle in what was probably a premature
detonation of the bomb, police said.
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- The Association of Muslim Scholars, an influential Sunni
group, said two of its members were assassinated in separate incidents
over the past 24 hours, raising concerns guerrillas were targeting clerics
to try to spark sectarian war.
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- More than 300 Iraqis have been killed in a surge of violence
over the past 10 days, casting doubt on whether elections can go ahead
in January as scheduled.
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- Prime Minister Iyad Allawi insisted on Sunday the polls
would take place as planned. The U.S. military says it has launched a drive
to regain control of rebel-held areas ahead of the elections.
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