An Iraqi group said in footage aired by an Arab TV station on Saturday it was holding 30 foreign hostages and threatened to decapitate them unless US forces lifted their blockade of the town of Falluja.
"We are calling for the withdrawal of American and coalition forces. We have Japanese, Bulgarian, Israeli, American, Spanish and Korean hostages. Their numbers are 30," a masked man holding a Kalashnikov rifle said.
"If America doesn't lift its blockade of Falluja their heads will be cut off," he said in the footage in Arabic, which Al Arabiya said it obtained from news agencies. It did not show any of the alleged hostages.
The speaker of the group of eight masked men said they were called the "Brigades of the Hero Martyr Sheikh Ahmed Yassin", in reference to the founder of the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, whom Israel assassinated last month.
"We announce the killing of four soldiers and we have the bodies," the speaker said. The footage showed the body of an unidentified and decomposing man in the sand.
It was not clear when he had been killed or when the tape had been made.