Pakistani police suspect that a
decapitated body unearthed in a blood-stained hut today could be that of murdered US reporter Daniel Pearl.
"The body was beheaded and in several pieces," police chief investigator Manzoor Mughal told AFPat the gravesite on the eastern outskirts of this southern port city.
"We will conduct medical examination of hairs and teeth. It could be Pearl but we want to be 100 per cent sure."
A video of Mr Pearl being beheaded was sent to the US consulate here after the Wall Street Journal reporter went missing while investigating Islamic militancy here on January 23.
A police source said the body had been dug up in a blood-stained room in a roughly built hut which "resembles closely what was shown on the pictures sent by e-mails showing Pearl in captivity".
He said the body had been buried within the room, and witnesses later said it was in a grave four to five feet deep.
Police later removed the body in an ambulance to a private mortuary in the southern district of Karachi. Reporters were not allowed inside.
A police source said a suspect picked up by the Crimes Investigation Agency earlier this week had tipped off the police about the location of the grave.
The suspect was possibly one of the seven men who have been charged in absentia with Pearl's murder, the source said.
Four men accused of Pearl's murder, including British-born Islamic militant Sheikh Omar, are on trial in a prison in Hyderabad, 160 kilometres north of Karachi but seven other suspects were still on the run.
AFP