Web site claims hostage killed

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A posting on an Islamic Web site claimed Tuesday that the al Qaeda-linked group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has slain a second American hostage in Iraq. The claim could not be verified immediately.\nThe group kidnapped two Americans -- Jack Hensley and Eugene Armstrong -- along with Briton Kenneth Bigley in Baghdad Sept. 16. Armstrong was beheaded by al-Zarqawi, and the militants on Monday posted a gruesome video of his death.\nThe new posting came as a 24-hour deadline set by al-Zarqawi's Tawhid and Jihad group passed for the release of all Iraqi women from U.S. custody.\n"The nation's zealous sons slaughtered the second American hostage after the end of the deadline," the statement said, and it promised to provide video proof of the death soon. It was signed with the pseudonym Abu Maysara al-Iraqi, the name usually used on statements from al-Zarqawi's group.\nThe brief statement did not give the name of the hostage killed. A Western diplomat in Baghdad, speaking on condition of anonymity, said authorities could not confirm the slaying because they had no body.\nA car bomb struck a U.S. patrol on the road to Baghdad's airport Tuesday, wounding four American soldiers and several Iraqis. The car bomb destroyed an armored Humvee and about 10 civilian vehicles on the highway. Ambulances rushed at least two women, a child and three wounded men to a hospital.\nSeptember has seen more than 30 car bombings as insurgents intensify a strategy of explosions and abductions in their campaign against U.S. forces and the allied government of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi.\nThe military announced Tuesday that two Marines were killed in action west of Baghdad, one in an attack on Monday, the other dying of wounds from an earlier incident. More that 1,000 U.S. servicemembers have died in Iraq since March 2003.\nThe slaying of Armstrong -- a 52-year-old civil engineer originally from Hillsdale, Mich. -- was shown in a video released Monday in which a militant read out a statement saying it was in revenge for the jailing of Muslim women and setting the 24-hour deadline for the killing of the next hostage.\nA CIA official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the agency's technical analysis determined with a "high degree of confidence" that the voice on the video is that of al-Zarqawi and that he personally beheaded Armstrong. A text on the video also claims that al-Zarqawi himself killed the American.\nArmstrong's body was found Monday hours before the news of his beheading became public, discovered near a highway overpass a few blocks from where he lived in the leafy west Baghdad neighborhood of Mansour, officials and witnesses said Tuesday.\nIn New York, President George W. Bush condemned the beheading and told the visiting Iraqi prime minister on Tuesday that "we will not allow these thugs to decide your fate."\nHe expressed "heartfelt condolences" to Armstrong's family and said, "We all stand in solidarity with the American that is now being held captive."\nSecretary of State Colin Powell said Armstrong's slaying was carried out by "terrorists who do not want to see the Iraqi people live in peace and freedom."\n"They have to be dealt with," Powell said. "This is not the time to think that we can walk away or run away from this challenge."\nIn the nine-minute video of Armstrong's death, posted Monday on the Internet, the sobbing, blindfolded hostage knelt in front of five masked militants dressed in black, with a black Tawhid and Jihad banner on the wall behind them.\nThe man believed to be al-Zarqawi, standing the center, read a statement, then pulled a knife, grabbed the hostage seated at his feet and sliced his head off. The victim screamed and blood poured from his neck.\n"You, sister, rejoice. God's soldiers are coming to get you out of your chains and restore your purity by returning you to your mother and father," the speaker said, addressing Iraqi women in U.S.-run jails in Iraq.\nThe U.S. military says the only two women in its custody in Iraq are two security prisoners: Dr. Rihab Rashid Taha, a scientist who became known as "Dr. Germ" for helping Iraq make weapons out of anthrax, and Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash, a biotech researcher known as "Mrs. Anthrax."\nIn the hours before the Tuesday deadline, relatives pleaded for the lives of the two remaining hostages, the 48-year-old Hensley of Marrietta, Ga., and the 62-year-old Bigley of Britain.\nPati Hensley, Jack Hensley's wife, appealed to his captors Tuesday to open lines of communication and spare his life.\n"I understand their political agenda, but what I need them to understand is the man who I have been with for 23 years, who is the father of our 13-year-old daughter, who does not understand this situation, why someone would want to hurt her father," she said in an interview with CNN. "I would plead with them to please realize this man does not deserve this fate."\nIn London, the Bigley family asked British Prime Minister Tony Blair to meet the captors' demands.\n"I ask Tony Blair personally to consider the amount of bloodshed already suffered," Craig Bigley, 33, said in a videotaped statement. "Please meet the demands and release my father -- two women for two men. ... Only you can save him now. You have children and you will understand how I feel at this time."\nBlair condemned the kidnappings at a news conference Monday.\n"But our response has not got to be to weaken," he said. "Our response has got to be to stand firm."\nTawhid and Jihad -- Arabic for "Monotheism and Holy War" -- has claimed responsibility for the slaying of at least six hostages in the past, including American Nicholas Berg, who was abducted in April. The group has also said it is behind a number of bombings and gun attacks.\nMore than 130 foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq, and at least 26 of them have been executed. Iraqis have also faced an epidemic of kidnappings in the chaos since the fall of Saddam Hussein last year, in many cases for ransom.\nA Turkish hostage, Tahsin Top, was released Tuesday after his company met kidnappers' demands and stopped working in Iraq, the Foreign Ministry said. Top had been abducted north of Baghdad on Aug. 5 by kidnappers who threatened to behead him.\nAnother Turkish company, the VINSAN construction firm, announced Tuesday that it, too, was leaving Iraq in a bid to save the lives of 10 Turkish employees kidnapped by another militant group. The group, which called itself "Salafist Brigades of Abu Bakr Al-Siddiq," said in a video broadcast Saturday that it would kill the men in three days unless the company pulled out.\nViolence continued unabated Tuesday. A roadside bomb hit a police vehicle in Baqouba, north of Baghdad, killing a civilian and wounding four people, police and hospital officials said.\nInsurgents attacked the Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad with mortars and heavy machine-gun fire, killing an inmate, the U.S. military said Tuesday. The prison, where U.S. soldiers were photographed sexually humiliating male prisoners, regularly comes under attack.\nIn Najaf, U.S. troops raided the offices of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and detained 12 people, including several foreign militants, the city's police chief said Tuesday. Al-Sadr lieutenants immediately warned of a "revolution" in Iraq unless the raids are stopped.\nMaj. Gen. Ghalib Al-Gazairi said American soldiers also seized "a large amount of weapons" in the midnight raids.\nThe U.S. military had no immediate comment.