Pakistani hostages killed by militants

A militant group holding two Pakistani men hostage said yesterday it had killed the men but freed their Iraqi driver, according to the television station al-Jazeera.

A militant group holding two Pakistani men hostage said yesterday it had killed the men but freed their Iraqi driver, according to the television station al-Jazeera.

The group, calling itself the Islamic Army in Iraq, announced in a video on Monday that it had kidnapped two Pakistanis working for US forces and had sentenced them to death because their country was discussing whether to send troops to Iraq.

In a video sent to al-Jazeera yesterday, the men said they had carried out their threat, the station reported. The newsreader said the video showed the corpses of the two men. The station chose not to broadcast the footage.

The kidnapped men were identified by Pakistani officials as an engineer, Raja Azad, 49, and a driver, Sajad Naeem, 29, both of whom worked for the Kuwait-based al-Tamimi group in Baghdad. The militants also warned the company to stop doing business in Iraq or they would kill more of its employees.

The group said it had released the Iraqi driver, Omar Khaled Selman, after it became clear he had been duped by the Pakistanis. Mr Selman described his ordeal in another video released yesterday.

"After interrogation, they charged us all with all the death penalty and then they postponed mine and carried out the death penalty for the two Pakistanis because it was clear that they were spies," he said.

"After further interrogation, they found out that I was only a driver and they released me."

The three men went missing on Friday after an attack on a convoy of trucks in which they were travelling.