Two Germans held hostage in Iraq appeared in a video urging their government to help secure their release.
The recording, aired by Arabic news broadcaster Al Jazeera, showed the pair kneeling in front of four masked gunmen.
Their voices were inaudible, but Al Jazeera said the video, which had a date stamp of January 24th, the day of their abduction, showed the two pair urging Berlin to help secure their release.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel vowed to do everything in her power to have the men freed. She said all of Germany had been "deeply moved by the images" and vowed the government "will do everything it can to bring our fellow countrymen home safely, unharmed and healthy."
Germany's foreign intelligence service, the BND, was analysing the footage, though a spokesman declined to comment on any conclusions BND analysts might have reached.
Iraqi security forces have set up checkpoints, circulated descriptions of the two engineers and made contact with local tribal leaders to help identify the kidnappers, a spokesman for the US-Iraqi Joint Coordination Centre in Tikrit, Iraq said.
Al Jazeera said the tape was received from a group that calls itself the Brigade of Ansar al-Tawhid Wa-Sunna. The group did not make any demands through the recording.
The word "al-Tawhid" is well known in Germany because of the "al-Tawhid trial" of Islamist militants at a Duesseldorf court that ended last year.
But a security source said the kidnappers appeared more probably to be supporters of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. "We guess they're more likely to be Baathists," the source said.
The two engineers - identified in German media reports as Rene Braeunlich and Thomas Nitzschke - were abducted on Tuesday outside their workplace in the Iraqi industrial town of Baiji, 110 miles north of Baghdad.
At least six gunmen in two unmarked cars grabbed the two men just outside a detergent plant in an industrial complex around Iraq's biggest oil refinery.