World

Web Site Shows IDs Of Missing GIs

June 4, 2007 / 12:13 PM EDT / CBS/AP

An Islamic militant Web site said Monday it would soon release video clips showing the capture of three American soldiers, who went missing in Iraq in mid-May.

According to CBS News Consultant Jere van Dyk, "This is the first time that we've seen a video like this since Abu Musab al Zarqawi was killed."

The video, which was made available to The Associated Press by the Washington-based SITE Institute, does not show the soldiers, and the black-and-white footage of what the group said was the ambush was grainy and unclear. The sounds of gunshots could be heard in the video clip.

The body of one soldier was later found in Iraq's Euphrates River, but the other two remain missing. A family friend of one of the missing soldiers said the U.S. military has briefed the soldier's father about the video, which does not show if the men are alive.

SITE said it had obtained the 10-minute, 41-second video that shows the planning stages and kidnapping operation as well as footage from after the attack that was shown on the pan-Arab satellite channel Al-Jazeera.

The institute, which monitors militant Web sites, said the video also shows the identification cards of two of the two missing soldiers. SITE released a still shot of the identification cards video that also displays the headline: "Bush is the reason of the loss of your POWs" written on the screen above the cards. SITE did not say how it obtained the video.

A prominent Islamic Web site, which commonly posts videos from militant groups, said in a banner headline that it would show the video within hours, but it was not yet posted.

The three U.S. soldiers were captured south of Baghdad on May 12 in an ambush later claimed by an insurgent umbrella group, the Islamic State of Iraq, that includes al Qaeda in Iraq.

The body of one of the soldiers was found on May 23 in the Euphrates River and later identified by the U.S. military as Pfc. Joseph Anzack Jr., 20, of Torrance, California.

The two other soldiers — Spc. Alex R. Jimenez, 25, of Lawrence, Massachusetts, and Pvt. Byron W. Fouty, 19, of Waterford, Michigan — remain missing.

A family friend of Fouty said the military briefed Fouty's father, Mick Fouty, about the video on Saturday night.

"From what I hear, it shows the soldier's uniforms and dog tags and warns the U.S. to back off on the search," said Cathy Conger of suburban Detroit.

"What it does not show one way or another is if they're alive or not," Conger said. "I just feel really bad about it. I hope that he's still alive. My prayers are with him."

Fouty's stepfather, Gordon Dibler of Oxford, Michigan, told a suburban Detroit radio station that the military told him Saturday that the video showed personal identification items from the soldiers.

"They prepared me in a very proper and considerate way," he told WWJ-AM radio.

In Massachusetts, the Jimenez family had not seen the video Monday, said family friend Wendy Luzon, who spoke with Jimenez's father, Ramon "Andy" Jimenez.

"He said it was a good sign for the family," Luzon said.

The three are from the 10th Mountain Division based out of Fort Drum, New York.

In Other Developments:

Three months after the start of President Bush's troop buildup in Iraq, the operation has fallen far short of its initial goal to reclaim control of Baghdad neighborhoods, according to a report in Monday's New York Times. Citing an internal U.S. military assessment completed in late May, the Times said American and Iraqi forces are able to "protect the population" and "maintain physical influence" over less than one-third of the capital's 457 neighborhoods.

Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul told European Union officials visiting Ankara that "we have every right to take measures against terrorist activities directed at us from northern Iraq," he said during a news conference after news that three soldiers were killed in a suicide bombing of a military outpost in southern Turkey.

Gunmen at a fake checkpoint in Baqouba, 35 miles north of Baghdad, also killed two passengers and wounded eight others when they opened fire on three minibuses that sought to flee from the highway trap.

At least 73 other Iraqis were killed or found dead nationwide, including 31 bullet-riddled bodies of men who were apparent victims of death squads usually believed to be run by Shiite militias.

American helicopter gunships attacked targets in Mahdi Army-dominated Shiite east Baghdad late Saturday, killing four suspected militants and destroying 10 rockets, the U.S. military reported, as the radical Shiite militia faced growing pressure to bow to central government authority.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military announced Sunday that 14 American soldiers were killed over the past three days, including four in a single roadside bombing and another who was struck by a suicide bomber while on a foot patrol.

The blast that killed the four U.S. soldiers occurred Sunday as the troops were conducting a cordon and search operation northwest of Baghdad, according to a statement. Two other soldiers were killed and five were wounded along with an Iraqi interpreter in two separate roadside bombings on Sunday, the military said.

In the boldest attack, a U.S. soldier was killed Friday after the patrol approached two suspicious men for questioning near a mosque southwest of Baghdad, and one of the suspects blew himself up. Military spokesman Maj. Webster Wright said U.S. troops also fired at the second suspect after he began acting aggressively, detonating his suicide vest.

"Our initial analysis is that these guys were al Qaeda and were planning to launch attacks into Baghdad," Wright said in an e-mailed statement.

Seven other soldiers were killed in a series of attacks across Iraq on Saturday.

Combined with the previously announced death of a U.S. soldier in central Baghdad on Friday, it was a deadly start for June, which comes after the third-deadliest month since the war started four years ago.

A car bomb also exploded outside a U.S. base near the volatile city of Baqouba, leaving a number of troops gasping for air and suffering from eye irritations, the military said. It did not confirm a report in the Los Angeles Times that the car was carrying chlorine canisters and said the soldiers who were sickened had been treated and returned to duty.

The attacks came days after the Pentagon announced the completion of the troop buildup ordered by U.S. President Bush in January, raising the total number of troops in Iraq to about 150,000. That number may still climb as more support troops move in.

The Bush administration has warned that the buildup will result in more U.S. casualties as more American soldiers come into contact with enemy forces and concentrate on the streets of Baghdad and remote outposts. May was the third bloodiest month since the war began in March 2003, with 127 troops deaths reported.

Sectarian violence persisted against Iraqis as well, with a car parked near a police station by an open-air market exploding shortly after noon in the predominantly Shiite enclave of Balad Ruz, in the volatile Diyala province of northeast of Baghdad, killing at least 10 people.

Abu Hussein, a 35-year-old elementary school teacher, said the force of the explosion knocked a bag of vegetables out of his hands.

He was not injured so helped to evacuate those who were, flooding the local hospital because they were afraid to take them to facilities in nearby Baqouba, which has become an insurgent stronghold.

"I went back and forth many times to the site of the explosion to transfer the wounded with my private car," he said. "I saw men and women rushing to the scene searching for their relatives and loved ones. One was crying 'my brother,' one was saying 'my father' and a woman was crying 'my husband.' It was chaos."