The bodies of two missing U.S. soldiers have been uncovered, a senior Iraqi military official said Tuesday. Maj. Gen. Abdul-Aziz Mohammed said the bodies were found on a street near a power plant in the town of Youssifiyah, just south of Baghdad.
The soldiers came under attack Friday at a traffic checkpoint near Youssifiyah. A third soldier was killed in this incident.
An armed group linked to al-Qaeda in Iraq claimed in a statement Monday that it had kidnapped the two U.S. soldiers. In a statement on Tuesday, it said the new leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq killed the two. The statement said the two soldiers were "slaughtered," suggesting they had been beheaded by Abu Hamza al-Muhajer. An Iraqi military official said the bodies showed signs of torture and were killed in a barbaric way.
Earlier Tuesday, a parked minivan exploded in a busy outdoor market in a Baghdad slum, killing four people and injuring 16, police said.
Elsewhere, a suicide bomber wearing an explosives belt blew himself up in a home for the elderly in the southern city of Basra, killing two people and wounding three.
