One US hostage killed, says Zarqawi group

The message was signed by Abu Maysarah Al-Iraqi, a pseudonym for a contributor who has previously posted messages on the Internet for the Tawhid and Jihad group.

The message said the group would soon post pictures of the ‘‘slaughter’’ of the three hostages, but gave no further details. Tawhid and Jihad said in footage posted on the Internet on Saturday that it would slit the throats of the two Americans and the Briton — kidnapped in Baghdad on Thursday — unless Iraqi women were freed from Abu Ghraib and Umm Qasr jails in 48 hours.

The US military says no women are being held in the prisons specified, but that two are in US custody. Dubbed ‘‘Dr Germ’’ and ‘‘Mrs Anthrax’’ by US forces, they are accused of working on Saddam Hussein’s weapons programmes and are in a prison for high-profile detainees.

On Sunday, a guerrilla group said it had captured 18 Iraqi soldiers and would kill them unless authorities freed an aide to Shi’ite cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr, Hazem Al-Araji, within 48 hours. Araji was arrested on Saturday night by US-backed forces, Sadr supporters said.

The release of the Iraqi soldiers followed an appeal by a Sadr aide, Ali Smeisim, for the hitherto unknown group, the Mohammad bin Abdullah Brigades, to free them. It was not immediately clear if Araji had been released.

Meanwhile, a group threatened to kill 10 workers from a US-Turkish firm unless their company halted business in Iraq within three days. Most of the workers seized are believed to be Turkish.

The Association of Muslim Scholars, an influential Sunni group, said two of its members were assassinated in separate incidents over the past 24 hours.

Guerrillas attacked a US patrol near Sharqat, north of Baghdad, on Monday, killing a soldier, the US military said.

A US air strike in Falluja on Monday killed at least two people, doctors said.

In Mosul, a car rigged with explosives blew up, killing all three inside the vehicle, in what was probably a premature detonation of the bomb, police said. In a separate incident in the same area, two Turkish journalists and two Turkish Red Crescent workers were wounded after gunmen opened fire on their vehicle, police said. —Reuters