Plus some information on the latest hostages, from Reuters:
BAGHDAD, Iraq (Reuters) – A decapitated corpse was found by police in northern Iraq Thursday and Bulgaria said it was investigating whether the body was one of two Bulgarians seized by militants loyal to al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
In Kuwait, the transport company that employs three Indians, three Kenyans and an Egyptian also kidnapped by guerrillas in Iraq said it would do all it can to win their release.
The announcement of their kidnapping Wednesday sparked a new hostage crisis just a day after guerrillas freed a Filipino driver following Manila’s capitulation to their demands.
Their captors say they will behead one hostage every three days unless the firm that employs the men, Kuwait and Gulf Link Transport Company, stops doing business in Iraq.
Iraqi police said the decapitated body and its severed head were found in the Tigris river near Baiji, 100 miles north of Baghdad, and taken to the city of Tikrit. Earlier this month another headless body in an orange jumpsuit was found in the river in the same area. It has yet to be identified.
The severed head was bloated from being submerged in the water. The body was dressed in a faded and torn reddish-colored tunic. Zarqawi’s group dresses its hostages in orange clothing before executing them, mimicking the orange jumpsuits worn by U.S. prisoners including Muslim detainees in Guantanamo Bay.
The two Bulgarians, Georgi Lazov and Ivailo Kepov, were seized as they delivered cars to Mosul in northern Iraq. Zarqawi’s group has already executed an American and a South Korean hostage, and has claimed responsibility for a series of suicide bomb attacks in Iraq.
“We are officially looking into the situation and are checking if the body is one of the Bulgarian hostages. We are trying to confirm this,” Bulgarian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Vicky Melamed said in Sofia.
BEGGING FOR THEIR LIVES
Video footage given to news organizations showed the seven kidnapped drivers looking tired and afraid in a dingy room, stating name and nationality to the camera and begging for their lives to be spared. One of them, Mohammed Ali Sanad from Egypt, tried to reassure his family.
“Mom, if you see me on TV don’t get worried, we are with the best people, the Iraqis,” he said. “You too my kids, Ahmed and Ali, don’t worry. I am coming at the end of the month as I promised you, but if we die then I say thank God.”