Al Qaida in Iraq has purportedly posted a statement on the internet blasting US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s visit to Iraq and criticising her calls for including Sunni Arabs in the political process.

A new online magazine purportedly posted by al-Qaida’s affiliate in Iraq has launched an effort to recruit Muslims to rid Iraq of infidels and apostates - its names for Americans and their Iraqi partners.

British hostage Kenneth Bigley’s life was tonight in the blood-stained hands of a terrorist who has severed the heads of two other captives.

A headless corpse was found in Baghdad today hours after an al-Qaida-linked group boasted it had killed a second American hostage, leaving the Briton they are holding to face execution.

Al-Jazeera television has cited a website claim that a second US hostage has been killed.