イラク戦争

Last month, Iraqi militants videotaped the killing of Italian hostage Fabrizio Quattrocchi, but the Arab TV network Al-Jazeera refused to air it because it was too graphic.

In the video of Berg, the executioners said they had tried to trade him for prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

''For the mothers and wives of American soldiers, we tell you that we offered the U.S. administration to exchange this hostage for some of the detainees in Abu Ghraib and they refused,'' one of the men read from a statement.

''So we tell you that the dignity of the Muslim men and women in Abu Ghraib and others is not redeemed except by blood and souls. You will not receive anything from us but coffins after coffins ... slaughtered in this way.''

Seven soldiers from the 372nd Military Police Company face charges in the mistreatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in a scandal that has sparked worldwide outrage. One of those soldiers faces a court-martial in Baghdad next week, the first to go to trial.

The American administrator of Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, said Tuesday that the soldiers accused of abuses would be brought to justice.

''I find the behavior of these American soldiers completely unacceptable and outrageous,'' Bremer told Associated Press Television News. ''I share the outrage of the Iraqi people and the people of the world as to what these guys did.''

April 9, when Berg last made contact with his family, also was the day that seven American contractors working for a subsidiary of Halliburton Corp. and two military men disappeared after their supply convoy was attacked on the outskirts of Baghdad.

Four of the Halliburton workers and one of the military men have since been confirmed dead. Halliburton worker Thomas Hamill escaped his captors May 2 and returned home to Mississippi on Saturday. The two other Halliburton workers and the other soldier remain missing.

Two soldiers also vanished April 9. One was later found dead and the other, Pfc. Keith M. Maupin of Batavia, Ohio, was taken captive and remains missing.