BAGHDAD, Sept. 22 -- A group led by a Jordanian militant, Abu Musab Zarqawi, said Tuesday that it had executed a second American hostage in two days and threatened to kill a British man who was abducted with the Americans last week.
A statement posted on an Islamic Web site by the group Monotheism and Jihad asserted that it had killed Jack Hensley, 48, a civil engineer from Marietta, Ga., and would soon post a video of the slaying on the site. The claim could not be independently verified, however, and the video had not been posted as of 3:30 a.m. local time Wednesday.
U.S. soldiers inspect the scene of a car bombing aimed at a military convoy on the road to Baghdad International Airport. Four soldiers were injured. In the western province of Anbar, two U.S. Marines were killed in separate attacks.
(Aladin Abdel Naby -- Reuters)
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On Monday, the same group posted a video of what it said was the beheading of Eugene "Jack" Armstrong, 52, a Michigan native. The video appeared on the Internet about one hour after a statement announcing Armstrong's slaying.
The group said Tuesday that it intended to kill Kenneth Bigley, 62, a British engineer, unless authorities released all Muslim women from two U.S.-run prisons in Iraq, but it set no deadline.
Hensley's killing would be the fifth in the past 48 hours involving a hostage in Iraq, where insurgents in recent months have not only abducted scores of foreigners and Iraqis but staged frequent attacks with bombs, mortars and firearms.
An estimated 300 people have been killed and hundreds injured here during the past two weeks, as a deteriorating security situation has hampered reconstruction efforts and threatened to derail the process of establishing democratic rule in Iraq, starting with nationwide elections planned before the end of January.
Two U.S. Marines were killed Tuesday in separate attacks in the western province of Anbar, and four soldiers were injured when a car bomb exploded near a convoy on the perilous road to Baghdad International Airport, the U.S. military reported.
The abductions carried out by Zarqawi's organization have been particularly confounding because of the elusive and perhaps unattainable demands of the kidnappers. After seizing Armstrong, Hensley and Bigley on Thursday, the group said they would be killed unless all Muslim women were released from two prisons run by the U.S. military: Abu Ghraib outside Baghdad and Camp Bucca in southern Iraq. The U.S. military says only two women are being held by U.S.-led forces and neither is confined at those prisons.
"The Lions of Monotheism and Jihad have slaughtered the second American hostage after the deadline lapsed," the statement on the Web site said. It added, "The British hostage will meet the same fate if the British government does not do what must be done to release him."
Zarqawi has been described by U.S. officials as an associate of al Qaeda and is perhaps the most wanted man in Iraq. U.S. forces have set a $25 million reward for information leading to his capture and staged repeated airstrikes on the city of Fallujah, where the U.S. military suspects that Zarqawi has his base of operations.
The video of Armstrong's killing identified Zarqawi as the hooded assailant who is shown reading a statement and then severing the contractor's head with a large knife. Last April, Zarqawi asserted responsibility for the beheading of another American contractor, Nicholas Berg, whose slaying was also depicted in an Internet video.
Hensley, who would turn 49 on Wednesday, earned a degree in mathematics from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Tuesday. He worked as a substitute teacher from October 2002 to May 2003, a spokesman for the Cobb County, Ga., school system told the paper.
Hensley's younger brother, Ty Hensley, told the Journal-Constitution that Hensley had gone to Iraq to earn extra money for his family. "He took the job primarily to get his family above water," Ty Hensley said. "When he went over there, no one had been decapitated."
Many American contractors have been drawn to Iraq by opportunities to make at least twice as much as they can in the United States -- and often more -- tax free. Private firms pay up to $12,000 a month for jobs in construction, civil engineering and maintenance.
Hensley, Armstrong and Bigley all worked as civil engineers for Gulf Supplies and Commercial Services Co., a construction company based in the United Arab Emirates. They were helping to renovate the Taji military base north of Baghdad, which is used by the reconstituted Iraqi army.
The three men shared a two-story house in the affluent Mansour neighborhood of south-central Baghdad. Neighbors said as many as 10 gunmen pulled up to the house on Thursday in a minivan, barged in and abducted the men without firing a shot. Two security guards who normally protected the house were not there, the neighbors said.
Relatives of Hensley and Bigley had gone on television in the United States and Britain to plead for the men's lives in the hours before Hensley was reported to have been killed. Hensley's wife, Pati, told CNN: "I understand their political agenda, but what I need them to understand is the man who I have been with for 23 years, who is the father of our 13-year-old daughter, who does not understand this situation, why someone would want to hurt her father. I would plead with them to please realize this man does not deserve this fate."
In London, the family of Bigley appealed to Prime Minister Tony Blair to meet the group's demands.
"I ask Tony Blair personally to consider the amount of bloodshed already suffered," Craig Bigley, 33, said in a videotaped statement. "Please meet the demands and release my father -- two women for two men. . . . Only you can save him now. You have children, and you will understand how I feel at this time."
Philip Bigley, the hostage's brother, said: "We are begging you not to kill them. We are begging you to find a solution, a compromise, that will help to save two lives, innocent lives."
Blair condemned the kidnappings at a news conference but gave no indication he would give in. "Our response has got to be to stand firm," he said.
