Iraqi police released two US hostages in a raid on Friday but a third foreigner was found dead a day after they were abducted when their truck convoy was hijacked at a bogus security checkpoint.
After the successful recovery in Zubayr, just south of the city of Basra, operations were continuing in the town's Dewajin district to find the two missing men, a police source said, according to Reuters.
Earlier, Arab media quoted Iraqi police as saying the Austrian, a 25-year-old former soldier, had been killed.
British troops killed two gunmen in a raid near the border town of Safwan.
The five foreigners, including four Americans, were taken hostage in southern Iraq near the Kuwaiti border, Iraqi security sources said on Friday. "The convoy was seized near Safwan yesterday," one source told Reuters in Basra.
The family of one American security contractor told a U.S. newspaper that U.S. officials said he had been captured.
The convoy was heading for Nassiriya, 375 km south of Baghdad.
In Washington, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said initial reports indicated the convoy attacked Thursday included 19 vehicles. NBC television reported that the kidnappers were wearing uniforms.
Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Garver, a U.S. spokesman in Baghdad, said the military was still checking reports that the convoy might have been stopped at a bogus security checkpoint.
