Iraqis 'parade US soldier on TV'

Iraqi fighters tonight paraded a 20-year-old captured American soldier on video.

Footage aired on the Arabic TV channel Al-Jazeera, showed Private first class Keith Matthew Maupin surrounded by masked men, some of who were armed.

Mr Maupin was one of two Gis who went missing, along with seven civilian contractors from the American firm Halliburton, during an ambush on a supply convoy on April 9.

The Halliburton workers and Mr Maupin’s comrade Sergeant Elmer Krause, 40, of Greensboro, North Carolina, are still unaccounted for.

Mr Maupin, of Batavia, Ohio, did not appear to have been injured.

He was heard to confirm his name as he sat on the floor, generally staring straight ahead but occasionally flashing glances from side to side.

It was not clear whether his captors had any demands.

The capture of the soldier marks a new low-point for the Pentagon and the White House, after a month in which nearly 90 US soldiers have been killed in Iraq.

Fears have grown for the fate of foreign hostages since Italian Fabrizio Quattrocchi was killed on Wednesday.

The Pentagon has insisted that it will not negotiate with hostage-takers or Iraqi fighters who capture troops.

Instead, it has said, the US military would attempt rescue missions where possible.

The soldiers and contractors were part of a supply convoy that was travelling on Highway One about seven miles west of Baghdad.

They were travelling toward the town of Abu Ghraib, last Friday when they were attacked by gunmen who also launched rocket-propelled grenades and mortars.

Earlier, it emerged that an American businessman had been abducted from his hotel in the British-controlled Iraqi city of Basra by kidnappers disguised as policemen.

Basra police chief Colonel Khalaf al-Maleki said the abduction of the American, who was of Jordanian origin, took place last night.

Including the Basra abduction, at least 21 foreigners have been abducted over the past week in a wave of kidnappings coinciding with intense violence around the country.

The abduction in Basra appeared to be the farthest south that a kidnapping has taken place.

The vast majority of the abducted foreigners were snatched on roads west and south of Baghdad, where gunmen have run rampant the past week, attacking convoys and battling US troops.

At least two hostages, two Arab aid workers, are believed to have been taken in south-central Iraq.

The kidnapped American is the owner of a security company that provides bodyguards, said the owner of the al-Rashid hotel, where he was staying.

Meanwhile, three Czech reporters, missing in Iraq since the weekend, were released by their kidnappers today.

“We all are in good condition,” one said from the Czech embassy in Baghdad.