Arabic television station Al Jazeera has aired a video tape that appears to show a U.S. soldier held by masked gunmen after being captured in an attack on a convoy last week.
The poor-quality tape showed a white male dressed in military fatigues sitting on the floor surrounded by masked gunmen.
One of the unidentified guerrilla group, reading a statement, said their prisoner was an American soldier who later on in the tape identified himself as Keith Matthew Maupin.
A US defence official in Washington said the U.S. military in Iraq had received a copy of what appeared to be the same tape and that they were examining it.
Two U.S. soldiers are currently listed as missing in Iraq after an attack on a fuel convoy near Baghdad.
The two are Pfc. Keith Maupin, 20, of Batavia, Ohio, and Sgt. Elmer Krause, 40, of Greensboro, North Carolina.
