Confusion over fate of seven hostages in Iraq

There is confusion today over the fate of seven truck drivers held hostage in Iraq.

There is confusion today over the fate of seven truck drivers held hostage in Iraq.

Kenya's foreign minister said militants had released the seven, including three Kenyans.

"The ministry was not sitting back but was negotiating hard and has succeeded in the release of the three Kenyans," Foreign Minister Chirau Ali Mwakwere told a news conference.

He added that the remaining hostages - three Indians and one Egyptian - had also been freed.

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Mr Mwakwere said the Kenyans, currently in the custody of the Egyptian embassy in Baghdad, would be taken to Kuwait where Kenya's ambassador to Saudi Arabia was due to receive them. The freed captives were in good health, the minister said.

Less than an hour earlier, an Iraqi tribal leader mediating for the release of the hostages said they had not been freed.

"They are not released, negotiations are still going on," Mr Hisham al-Dulaymi said. "There's no way they could be released. On the contrary, there are some complications with the negotiations, but we're still hopeful."

The Kuwaiti firm that employs the seven men also said they had not been freed.

Earlier, Militants purportedly led by al-Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi said they had kidnapped two truck drivers in Iraq and would behead them in 48 hours unless their Turkish company quit the country.

The kidnapping was the latest in a growing wave of hostage-taking that has hit Iraq since April as guerrillas wage a campaign to undermine US-led forces and Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's interim government.

Al Jazeera screened a video tape showing the two drivers in front of a group of masked gunmen and said the militants had vowed to behead the hostages unless their firm stopped supplying the US military in Iraq and quit the country completely.

A black banner in the background bore the name of the Tawhid and Jihad group led by Jordanian-born Zarqawi, accused by Washington of links to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda.

Al Jazeera named the two hostages as Abdulrahman Damir and Saeed Anwar, but did not give their nationalities.

Dozens of foreign hostages have been seized in the past few months, most of them truck drivers working for foreign companies delivering supplies to US forces or Iraqi companies.

At least eight hostages have been killed, four by beheading.