Iraqi police said they retrieved a second corpse in an orange jumpsuit from the Tigris River early on Friday near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul and turned it over to the United States military.
But a US military spokesman in the area denied all knowledge of the find.
The man, described only as a Westerner, was found floating in the Tigris outside Mosul, 370km north of Baghdad, with his throat slit, said police General Salem Haj Issa.
”The body was handed over to the Americans,” Issa said, refusing to link the discovery with a hostage crisis in the area surrounding two Bulgarian truck drivers.
At the same time, US military spokesperson Joseph Piek said he has no confirmation of the report. ”We have checked with all our units and the police, and nobody has any information on this,” Piek said in an email.
Several foreigners taken hostage in Iraq have been shown in videos dressed in orange outfits similar to those worn by prisoners at the US detention centre in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
At least three of them have been slain by their captors.
The apparent latest find followed the retrieval — confirmed by the US military and Iraqi police — from the same river on Wednesday evening of a headless corpse also wearing an orange outfit.
A US military spokeswoman said on Thursday that the remains of the first body are being investigated, but for the time being its identity remains unknown.
In the latest hostage atrocity to hit Iraq, the captors of a Bulgarian truck driver announced on Tuesday that he had been beheaded.
The Bulgarian government confirmed the death. He is believed to be 30-year-old Georgy Lazov, but his identity has not been confirmed.
The kidnappers had threatened to also kill the other Bulgarian hostage by Wednesday evening unless US forces released Iraqi prisoners they are holding within 24 hours, Al-Jazeera satellite television said. His fate remains unknown.
Bulgaria has said there is little hope of saving his life.
”With every hour that passes the situation becomes increasingly serious and the probability that he will be saved increasingly fades,” Foreign Minister Solomon Passi said on Thursday. — Sapa-AFP