- BAGHDAD (Reuters) -- Militants
killed a second American captive in Iraq after a 24-hour deadline passed
on Tuesday, a Web site statement and Arab television said.
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- There was no immediate word of the fate of a Briton also
being held by the Tawhid and Jihad group which on Monday said it had beheaded
the first of three contractors seized last week.
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- The group, led by al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,
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- said on Monday in video footage of American Eugene Armstrong's
killing that it would behead the other two within a day unless women inmates
were freed from Abu Ghraib and Umm Qasr jails.
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- Al Jazeera television said a statement announcing the
killing of fellow American Jack Hensley, 48, was on the Internet. On one
Islamist site, a contributor who has in the past posted messages in the
name of the group said he was dead.
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- "The sons of our nation have slit the throat of
the second American hostage after the deadline passed and we will provide
you with pictures soon," said the contributor, who goes by the pseudonym
Abu Maysarah al-Iraqi.
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- The State Department could not confirm the killing.
-
- President Bush has said Washington will not negotiate,
and at the United Nations on Tuesday he vowed not to retreat against an
insurgency he said was likely to bring increased violence in coming months.
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- The U.S. military says there are no women in either of
the named prisons, and only two women in U.S. detention in Iraq.
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- The high-profile two, nicknamed "Mrs. Anthrax"
and "Dr Germ," are accused of working on Saddam Hussein's weapons
programs and are held at a secret high-security camp.
-
- Before the report of Hensley's death, the family of British
hostage Kenneth Bigley, 62, urged the prime minister to have the two women
freed, though there was no confirmation from the kidnappers that this was
specifically what they were seeking.
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- "I ask Tony Blair personally to consider the amount
of bloodshed already suffered," Bigley's son Craig said. "Only
you can save him now ... please meet the demands and release my father
-- two women for two men."
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- A spokesman for Blair said: "We are following the
situation very closely and the government is doing all that it can."
-
- The militants' first video footage released on Monday
showed Armstrong, 52, sitting blindfolded on the floor in an orange jumpsuit,
black-clad and hooded gunmen standing behind him.
-
- One militant read a statement and attacked the hostage's
neck with a knife. Further close-ups showed the head being sawn off. CIA
said it believed Zarqawi -- Washington's number one enemy in Iraq -- was
the man delivering the statement.
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- Armstrong, Hensley and Bigley were seized by gunmen from
the house they shared in Baghdad on Thursday.
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- BUSH DEFIANT
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- In a speech with election-year overtones before skeptical
world leaders at the United Nations annual general assembly, Bush made
no apologies about going to war against Iraq in 2003 without U.N. Security
Council backing.
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- "The work ahead is demanding. But these difficulties
will not shake our conviction that the future of Afghanistan and Iraq is
a future of liberty. The proper response to difficulty is not to retreat
-- it is to prevail," he added, to no more than polite applause. Bush
faces re-election in November.
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- The United States has offered $25 million for information
leading to Zarqawi's death or capture, and has launched a series of air
strikes on the rebel-held city of Falluja, west of Baghdad, targeting suspected
hideouts used by his followers.
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- Jordanian-born Zarqawi's group has claimed responsibility
for most of the bloodiest suicide attacks since Saddam's overthrow, and
beheaded U.S. telecoms engineer Nicholas Berg in May and South Korean driver
Kim Sun-il in June.
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- The statement read out on the video of Armstrong's killing
ridiculed Bush and promised Iraqi women their honor would be protected.
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- "Oh, you Christian dog Bush, stop your arrogance
... the mujahideen will give America a taste of the degradation you have
inflicted on the Iraqi people," the statement said.
-
- More than a dozen hostages are being held in Iraq and
are threatened with death unless their captors' demands are met.
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- Two French journalists were seized a month ago, and two
female Italian aid workers were kidnapped earlier this month.
-
- Another guerrilla group has threatened to kill 10 Turkish
workers unless their company stops doing business in Iraq. The firm said
on Tuesday it would do so.
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- Iraqi police said they found the body of a Turkish driver
who had been shot several times, but Turkish media said militants released
another truck driver kidnapped six weeks ago.
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- The U.S. military said two U.S. marines died in fighting
in Anbar province west of Baghdad, which includes Falluja.
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- U.S. officials said the Bush administration had begun
tapping its $25 billion emergency fund for the Iraq war to prepare for
a major troop rotation and intense fighting this autumn, after earlier
insisting it had enough money.
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- Already the Pentagon has used more than $2 billion of
the fund. The money is being used to ramp up production of armored vehicles
to support the troop rotation, as well as to buy body armor and bolster
fuel supplies, the officials told Reuters.
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- U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, speaking before Bush,
denounced an insurgency where civilians are massacred and relief workers,
journalists and others "are taken hostage and put to death in the
most barbarous fashion."
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- - Additional reporting by Miral Fahmy in Dubai
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