Author:
Publication: CNN News
Date: August 31, 2004
One man apparently beheaded, 11
shot in head
An Islamic Web site has posted gruesome
still images and videos of what it says is the killing of 12 Nepalese hostages
by a militant group in Iraq.
Footage posted on Tuesday showed
one beheading and 11 others apparently shot from an assault rifle at the
back of the head.
The video shows a masked man in
desert camouflage apparently slitting the throat of a blindfolded man lying
on the ground, The Associated Press reported.
The blindfolded man moans and a
shrill wheeze is heard, then the masked man displays the head to the camera
before resting it on the decapitated body.
CNN is working to confirm the authenticity
of the images. The still images appear to have been taken from the video.
The Nepalese Foreign Ministry in
Kathmandu said it had no official confirmation of what appears to have
taken place.
"We have carried out the sentence
of God against 12 Nepalese who came from their country to fight the Muslims
and to serve the Jews and the Christians ... believing in Buddha as their
God," said a statement on the site by Jaish Ansar al-Sunna.
The claims came as another Islamic
group held two French journalists hostage, threatening to kill them unless
the government of France revokes a law banning Muslim children from wearing
headscarves in public schools. (Full story)
The Web site statement vowed to
keep fighting the Americans in Iraq.
"America today has used all its
force, as well as the help of others, to fight Islam under the so-called
war on terror, which is nothing but a vicious crusade against Muslims,"
the statement said.
At the end of the four-minute video,
a man reads another statement off-camera, vowing to fight the Iraqi government.
"We will work on exterminating them
until the last fighter," he said. The brother of hostage Ramesh Khadka,
Sudarshan Khadka, said he did not know how to tell his parents.
Iyad Mansoor, director-general
of the Morning Star Company, a Jordan-based services firm which had contracted
the 12 Nepalese workers for jobs in Iraq, said he had no information on
the beheading of the Nepalese captives.
"I'm shocked to hear such news,"
he told AP. "The last I heard was that the Nepalese government was in contact
with Iraqi clergymen and others in an effort to set the 12 men free."
Journalist Akhilesh Upadhyay told
CNN from Nepal that the news had been greeted from the men's families with
shock.
Sudarshan Khadka, 23, the elder
brother of hostage Ramesh Khadka, 19, told him he had just heard the news
and was not sure whether it was true but was "stunned." He did not know
how to break the news to his parents, he said.
Jaish Ansar al-Sunna said on August
23 it had kidnapped 12 Nepali citizens "for their cooperation with the
United States in fighting Islam and its people" and described them as working
for a Nepalese company that works under a Jordanian firm doing business
in Iraq.
Last week a videotape was aired
on the Arabic-language television network Al-Jazeera purportedly showing
the 12.
Nepalese Minister of State for Foreign
Affairs Prakash Sharan Mahat said then that his government had asked Al-Jazeera
to help it establish a relationship with the militant group behind the
abductions.
In that video, a masked man wearing
military fatigues aimed a machine gun at the men.
