The Arabic satellite network, Al Jazeera, says Islamic militants have killed an American soldier they had held hostage for nearly three months, saying the murder was retribution for Washington's unchanged policy in Iraq.
Al Jazeera said Tuesday that the killing of Specialist Keith M. Maupin of Ohio, came hours after the United States returned sovereignty in Iraq to an interim government. The report did not say when the American soldier was killed.
Al-Jazeera said it had received a videotape showing a man being shot. Along with the videotape, Al-Jazeera received a statement from a militant group calling itself "The Sharp Sword against the Enemies of God and His Prophet." In the statement, the militants said they killed the soldier because the United States did not change its policies in Iraq and to avenge "martyrs" in Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Algeria.
Al-Jazeera aired a video showing a blindfolded man sitting on the ground, identified as Maupin by the statement issued with the footage. Al-Jazeera said that in the next scene, gunmen shoot the man in the back of the head, in front of a hole dug in the ground. The station did not broadcast the killing.
The U.S. military said it could not immediately confirm whether the man in the videotape was indeed Maupin, saying that the videotape is being analyzed by the Department of Defense.
Maupin was among nine Americans, seven of them contractors, who disappeared after an ambush on a convoy west of Baghdad on April 9.