IRAQ: Three mutilated bodies have been found under a suspension bridge in central Baghdad, according to the Iraqi Interior Ministry.
The river patrol police found the three unidentified corpses on Tuesday beneath a bridge that leads across the Tigris river into the Green Zone, home to the Iraqi interim government. The bodies did not appear to be foreign, he said. Some two dozen foreigners are missing in Iraq.
Al Jazeera television said yesterday a militant group had beheaded three Iraqi National Guards whom the militants accused of spying for US troops in Iraq and helping to arrest insurgents.
The Arabic news network aired video footage from the previously unknown "Brigades of the Iraqi Honourables", which showed three men with a masked militant standing behind them.
The video showed close-ups of the men's identification cards and showed them speaking, but their statements were not audible.
The television said it would not show them being beheaded "in respect to viewers' feelings".
A US embassy spokesman said he had no information about the three bodies, or about a US-Lebanese contractor seized in the Iraqi capital's affluent Mansour district on Tuesday evening.
He said the embassy also had no word on an American national kidnapped along with a Filipino and a Nepali from their Saudi company's office in the same area on Monday. Four Jordanian truck drivers were also kidnapped in western Iraq on Tuesday.