US: The tortured bodies of two US soldiers were recovered in Iraq yesterday after the two privates had been captured last week in an insurgent attack. An Iraqi official said they were "killed in a barbaric way", while an Islamist website claiming the killing for the al-Qaeda group in Iraq suggested they had been beheaded.
At a press conference in Baghdad, US military officials said the bodies were first spotted late on Monday, dumped on waste ground near an electrical plant in Yusufiyah, but not retrieved until morning - because it was dark and they was feared they might have been booby-trapped.
They told reporters at the Pentagon the bodies were so badly mutilated that visual identification was difficult.
Private Kristian Menchaca (23) from Houston, Texas, and Private Thomas Tucker (25) from Madras, Oregon, were seized last Friday in an insurgent attack on a traffic checkpoint outside Yusufiyah, 20km south of Baghdad, in a Sunni region known as the Triangle of Death.
The discovery, following a tip from a civilian, ends a hunt by 8,000 US and Iraqi troops, backed up by air and marine support, which made raids on 12 villages.
In Brownsville in Texas, Pte Menchaca's uncle, Ken Mackenzie, blamed the Bush administration for his nephew's death. "Because the US government did not have a plan in place, my nephew has paid for it with his life," he told NBC television.
In Madras, people gathered outside the Tucker family home in tears. Yellow ribbons were hung on trees throughout the small town and American flags were raised in his neighbourhood.
The bodies were recovered at daylight by a large group of Iraqi and American troops, accompanied by an ordnance team.
When they reached the bodies, they saw signs of torture and mutilation, said Maj Gen Abdul Aziz, an Iraqi military spokesman. He added: "They were killed in a barbaric way."
A statement on an Islamist website claimed they were killed by Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, named last week as leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq after Abu Musa al-Zarqawi's death in a US air strike on June 7th.
The Mujahideen Shura Council, an umbrella group which includes al-Qaeda and which had claimed credit for abducting the two, said it killed them.
In a separate posting on Monday, the group claimed the kidnapping of four Russian embassy workers, giving the authorities in Moscow 48 hours to withdraw from Chechnya and release Muslim detainees, otherwise it would kill the men.
In yesterday's posting on a known Islamist website, the group said: "We give the good news . . . to the Islamic nation that we have carried God's verdict by slaughtering the two captured crusaders." It added: "With God Almighty's blessing, Abu Hamza al-Muhajir carried out the verdict of the Islamic court."
The statement used an Arabic word - nahr - normally reserved for the slaughter of sheep and which militants use to refer to beheadings.
Meanwhile, Japan's prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, said yesterday Japan would withdraw its 550 soldiers who were engaged in reconstruction and humanitarian work in Iraq.
A senior British officer also warned yesterday that British troops were facing an increasingly dangerous security situation in Basra, with rising levels of violence.
Painting a gloomy picture of British-controlled southern Iraq, Lieut Gen Nick Houghton, Britain's chief of joint operations, also told the House of Commons defence committee that it would be "some time" before Britain could hand over responsibility to Iraq for defending the country's crucial oil producing region in the northern Gulf.
Describing the situation as "worrying" he said provincial elections in the region, originally planned for the summer, would probably have to be delayed until the autumn.
The general's assessment was in contrast with recent upbeat comments about the security situation in Iraq by Tony Blair.
The general's words were echoed by armed forces minister Adam Ingram, who said: "I am conscious of the fact that the first time I visited Iraq I was on the streets with our soldiers who were in soft hats . . . I don't think that could happen now."