Korea is stunned after Iraqi militants behead hostage

A South Korean translator held hostage in Iraq was beheaded yesterday and his body found dumped between Baghdad and Fallujah, dashing 11th-hour hopes that his life might be spared and ratcheting up pressure on the South Korean government to cancel its planned deployment of 3,000 troops to Iraq this summer.

A South Korean translator held hostage in Iraq was beheaded yesterday and his body found dumped between Baghdad and Fallujah, dashing 11th-hour hopes that his life might be spared and ratcheting up pressure on the South Korean government to cancel its planned deployment of 3,000 troops to Iraq this summer.

A videotape of the killing was sent to the al-Jazeera satellite network, which broadcast only an initial snippet showing Kim Sun-Il, 33, kneeling and blindfolded as his captors say they are about the carry out their threat. "We warned you and you ignored [the warning]," one of a group of gunmen standing over him tells the camera. "Enough lies. Your army is not here for the sake of Iraqis but for the sake of cursed America."

Government officials in Seoul said the dead man's remains were found in the late afternoon by the US military between Baghdad and Fallujah. His identity was confirmed by the South Korean embassy in Baghdad, which examined pictures of the body it received by e-mail. The South Korean consul in Iraq and the president of Mr Kim's company, Gana General Trading, a supplier to the US military, immediately made their way to the site to collect his body.

Mr Kim, a fluent Arabic speaker and evangelical Christian, was the third foreign civilian to be kidnapped and killed in Iraq in two months, following the Italian Fabrizio Quattrocchi and the American Nicholas Berg. His killing followed hard on the heels of Paul Johnson, an American engineer in Saudi Arabia, who was beheaded last Friday.

Although the four men were captured by a variety of groups in different countries ­ Mr Kim's group called itself Jamaat al-Tawhid al-Jihad, or Monotheism and Jihad ­ the war declared by radical Islamists across the Middle East appears to have entered a new phase in which the shock impact of beheadings has become the tactic of choice.

Mr Kim was captured in Fallujah just hours after South Korea's ruling Uri Party voted last Thursday in favour of the troop deployment. The 3,000-strong contingent would be the third-largest foreign military presence in Iraq, behind the United States and Britain.

It now remains to be seen whether South Korea will hold firm to that plan. An emergency meeting of the National Security Council was convened during the night in Korea, as a shocked nation expressed mounting opposition to the plan.

A government spokesman, Shin Bong-kil, did not comment on the deployment plan but said of the killing: "It breaks our heart that we have to announce this unfortunate news."

The Korean's captors had issued a 24-hour ultimatum on Sunday, saying they would send South Korea Mr Kim's head unless it backed down on its deployment plan. In a videotape sent to Middle Eastern broadcasters, Mr Kim was shown screaming in English: "Korean soldiers, please get out of here. I don't want to die. I don't want to die. I know that your life is important, but my life is important."

The South Korean government refused to change its position, but some negotiation appeared to be under way, because the Monday deadline came and went without Mr Kim being killed. Mohammed al-Obedi, an Iraqi working for the South Korean security firm NKTS, told reporters he was acting as a go-between and talking to Islamic clerics who were in turn in touch with the captors.

He said some flexibility appeared to be possible if the South Koreans made concessions. The reprieve lasted less than 24 hours, however.

Mr Kim's death is likely to have an immediate effect on the other 22 South Korean civilians still in Iraq. The Commerce, Industry and Energy Ministry in Seoul announced yesterday that they would all leave the country by the beginning of next month.

There are signs that disquiet is growing in other parts of the world about the safety of foreign civilians in Iraq. Thousands marched through Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, yesterday to demand the return of the country's 1,600 peacekeepers in Iraq.

In the United States, the prospect of further abductions and beheadings cast a pall over a meeting of the House Armed Services Committee on Iraqi security.

Representative Ike Skelton of Missouri called Iraq a "security quagmire" and challenged Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy Secretary of Defence, to say how long US forces would remain there. "We're not stuck," Mr Wolfowitz insisted. He conceded, however, that the US could well remain in Iraq for years.

* The US launched an airstrike yesterday in Fallujah on what it said was a safehouse used by followers of the Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the second airstrike aimed at the terror network in three days.
Al-Jazeera television reported that three people were killed and six were wounded. Residents of Fallujah said that the strike hit a car park.