The tortured bodies of two United States soldiers were recovered in Iraq on Tuesday, after the two privates had been captured last week in an insurgent attack. An Iraqi official said they were ”killed in a barbaric way”, and 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 Yusufiya, but not retrieved until morning — because it was already dark and it 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) of Houston in Texas, and Private Thomas Tucker (25) from Madras in Oregon, were seized last Friday in an insurgent attack on a traffic checkpoint outside the town, about 19km south of Baghdad in a Sunni region known as the Triangle of Death because of frequent attacks on US and Iraqi troops.
The discovery, following a tip from a civilian, ends a manhunt by 8 000 US and Iraqi troops, backed up by air and marine support, which made raids on 12 villages.
In Brownsville in Texas, 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. They had encountered homemade bombs, including along the road leading to where the bodies were discovered, US military officials said. When they reached the bodies, they saw signs of torture and mutilation, said Major General Abdul Aziz, an Iraqi military spokesperson, adding: ”With great regret, they were killed in a barbaric way.” It appeared they had been killed elsewhere, Major General William Caldwell IV, the US military spokesperson in Baghdad, told reporters.
A statement on an Islamist website claimed they were killed by Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, named last week as leader of the small al-Qaeda network in Iraq after Abu Musa al-Zarqawi’s death in a US air strike on June 7. It was the first act claimed by the new leader.
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 in its prisons, otherwise it would kill the men.
In Tuesday’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. It also mocked efforts to rescue the two: ”The army of ‘the mightiest state in the world’ went back defeated …”
Caldwell did not comment on suggestions the men had been decapitated. – Guardian Unlimited Â