IRAQ:The Islamic State of Iraq, an umbrella group of insurgents that includes al-Qaeda in Iraq, released a video yesterday in which it claimed to have killed all three American soldiers who went missing in the country last month.
The body of one of the three was found floating in the Euphrates river two weeks ago and identified as Pte Joseph Anzack. A postmortem showed he had been tortured and then shot twice.
The status of the other two captives, Pte Byron Fouty and Specialist Alex Jimenez, had remained unconfirmed.
The video, lasting 10 minutes and 41 seconds, was obtained by the Site Institute in Washington, which monitors extremist websites. It carries details of the three men's belongings, including identification cards, a pistol and credit cards.
In a translation by Associated Press, the video makers say the captives were killed in retaliation for the intense US search for them: "Fearing that this will have bad repercussions, the State of Islam decided to, and announced, their killing, making it a bitter result for the enemies of God, because they were alive and then dead."
The three were captured in a predawn ambush south of Baghdad on May 12th. The US army has flooded areas on the outskirts of Baghdad with up to 4,000 soldiers, in a rescue mission that has in turn led to the deaths of several American soldiers.
The release of the video comes as the US death toll in Iraq continues to rise following President George W Bush's decision to step up the number of troops there.
Seventeen American soldiers have been killed in the first three days of this month, 14 of them reported on Sunday.
Last month saw the third-highest monthly incidence of US military deaths since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.
Further grim news for Washington came with an internal military assessment of Mr Bush's so-called "surge" strategy that concluded that the US and Iraqi armies were failing to meet their target of securing most neighbourhoods of Baghdad by July.
The assessment, obtained by the New York Times, suggested that only a third of the capital's local areas were now under coalition control. - (Guardian service)