Unidentified gunmen in Iraq have kidnapped a Pakistani driver and are threatening to behead him within three days unless Iraqi prisoners are released, Al Arabiya television reported on Sunday.
"This man was taken after an attack on a US base in Balad," said a masked gunman on a tape broadcast by the Dubai-based television channel.
"You must release our prisoners held near the US base in Balad, in Dujail, in Yethrib, in Samarra and near Abu Ghraib. You have three days from the date of this recording and after that we will behead him. We have warned you."
Balad, Dujail, Yethrib and Samarra are towns north of Baghdad. Abu Ghraib is a Baghdad jail that was the scene of much-publicised abuse of Iraqi prisoners by US forces.
The gunmen did not say whether they were affiliated to Jama'at al-Tawhid and Jihad, a group headed by al Qaeda-linked operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi which has carried out previous kidnappings and beheadings of foreign hostages in Iraq.
The tape showed three men, their faces covered by chequered Arab headdresses, standing behind the crouching Pakistani, who displayed an identity card from US firm Kellogg, Brown and Root which works with the US military.
US MARINE: Meanwhile, an Iraqi group has kidnapped what is said was a US Marine and is threatening to behead him unless Iraqi prisoners are freed, Al Jazeera television reported on Sunday.
Al Jazeera said the group called itself the Islamic Response Movement. A brief video showed a blindfolded man dressed in camouflage and a Marine Corps identity card that named him as Wassef Ali Hassoun.
Jazeera said the group threatened to kill him if Iraqi prisoners were not released.
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