Two US soldiers who went missing south of Baghdad last week were killed and their bodies were found in an area where a group linked to al-Qaeda said it had abducted them, an Iraqi defence official said today.
He said the bodies showed signs of torture, and that men appeared to have been killed "in a barbaric way."
An umbrella group that purports to represent Iraqi insurgents claimed responsibility for the soldiers' deaths.
In a statement posted on the Internet, the Mujahideen Shura Council said:
"We give the good news ... to the Islamic nation that we have carried God's verdict by slaughtering the two captured crusaders."
The Council claimed yesterday to have kidnapped the soldiers - Private Thomas Lowell Tucker (25) from Madras, Oregon, and Private Kristian Menchaca (23), from Houston, Texas.
The two went missing at dusk on Friday after an ambush at a checkpoint in Yusufiya, a town in an area south of Baghdad some Iraqis call the "Triangle of Death, which is an al-Qaeda stronghold. Another soldier was killed in the attack.
A farmer claiming to have witnessed the attack told journalists that insurgents swarmed the checkpoint, killing the driver of a Humvee before taking two of his comrades captive.
Ahmed Khalaf Falah said three Humvees were manning a checkpoint when they came under fire from many directions. Two Humvees went after the assailants but the third was ambushed before it could move.
He said seven masked gunmen, one carrying a heavy machine gun, killed the driver of the third vehicle and took the two other US soldiers captive. His account could not be verified independently.
Elsewhere today, a car bomb killed seven people in a crowded Baghdad market, in spite of a crackdown on al-Qaeda that the government says involves 40,000 Iraqi forces.
In the southern city of Basra, a suicide bomber attacked a crowd of elderly and disabled people as they gathered to collect pensions.
The bomber, who had two belts of explosives strapped around him, wounded five people.