BAGHDAD, Iraq -A posting on an Islamic Web site yesterday claimed that the al-Qaida-linked group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has slain a U.S. hostage in Iraq, just 24 hours after a grisly video showed the terror mastermind beheading another American captive.
The posting was followed about two hours later by a claim on a different Web site threatening to kill a third hostage, a British man, if women prisoners in Iraq are not freed. Neither claim could immediately be verified.
Al-Zarqawi's group, Tawhid and Jihad, kidnapped two Americans -Jack Hensley and Eugene Armstrong -and Briton Kenneth Bigley on Thursday from a home that the three civil engineers shared in an upscale Baghdad neighborhood. Al-Zarqawi beheaded Armstrong, and the militants on Monday posted a gruesome video of the 52-year-old man's death.
The new postings followed the passing of the militants' 24-hour deadline for the release of all Iraqi women from prison, and after anguished relatives in the United States and Britain begged for the lives of Bigley, 62, and Hensley, who would have marked his 49th birthday today.
The nation's zealous sons slaughtered the second American hostage after the end of the deadline
the first statement said. It was signed with the pseudonym Abu Maysara al-Iraqi, the name usually used on statements from al-Zarqawi's group. Claims on this Web site have proven to be accurate in the past.
The brief statement did not give the name of the hostage killed. It promised video proof soon.
Tawhid and Jihad -Arabic words for Monotheism and Holy War - has claimed responsibility for killing at least seven hostages, including another American, Nicholas Berg, who was abducted in April. The group has also said it is behind a number of bombings and gun attacks.
This week's back-to-back killings and the threat of more, however, represented a heightened level of psychological warfare in al-Zarqawi's campaign of terror.
A host of militant groups have used kidnappings and bombings as their signature weapons in a blood-soaked campaign to undermine interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's government and force the United States and its allies out of Iraq. The violence has already persuaded companies to leave Iraq, hindered foreign investment, led firms to drop out of aid projects and restricted activities to relatively safe areas. 17
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