Iraqi rebels execute U.S. soldier

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Iraqi militants killed an American soldier they had held hostage for nearly three months, saying the killing was carried out because the U.S. government did not change its policy in Iraq, Al-Jazeera television said today.

The report of the killing of Spc. Keith M. Maupin, 20, of Batavia, Ohio, came hours after the United States had returned sovereignty in Iraq to an interim government. The report did not say when Maupin had been killed.

The U.S. military said it could not confirm immediately whether a man shown being shot in a murky videotape was Maupin, who was taken hostage after an April 9 attack outside Baghdad.

Meanwhile, the father of a U.S. Marine who was reported kidnapped by militants issued a plea on Monday for his release. The captors of Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun have threatened to behead him.

Four other hostages – three Turks and a Pakistani – also face threats of beheading in the next two days in a new flurry of abductions and death threats in Iraq.

Al-Jazeera aired a video showing a blindfolded man sitting on the ground, identified as Maupin by a statement issued with the footage. Al-Jazeera said that in the next scene, gunmen shot the man in the back of the head in front of a hole dug in the ground. The station did not broadcast the killing.

Maupin was among nine Americans, seven of them contractors, who disappeared after an ambush on a convoy west of Baghdad on April 9.

The bodies of four civilian employees of Kellogg Brown & Root were found later in a shallow grave near the site of the attack. The body of Sgt. Elmer Krause, of Greensboro, N.C., also was found later.

One civilian driver, Thomas Hamill, of Macon, Miss., was kidnapped but escaped from his captors nearly a month later. The others are missing.