Bush admits gravity of mounting Iraq unrest

The body of Tom Fox, a 54-year-old peace activist from Virginia, seized with a British and two Canadian colleagues, was found in a plastic bag on a garbage dump in west Baghdad, a witness and an interior ministry official said.

He had been shot and his body, in a track suit, had been wrapped in a blanket and stuffed in a plastic bag.

Iraqi police found it in a vacant lot in the western Al-Mansur district at around 5 pm (1400 GMT) on Thursday, the ministry official said. It appeared he had been killed recently.

Recognising that they had found a Westerner, police immediately contacted US forces who took charge of the body.

The State Department said earlier in Washington that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had confirmed that the body was that of Fox.

"The FBI verified the identity of a body found in Iraq this morning," spokesman Noel Clay told reporters.

"While additional forensics will be completed in the United States, they believe this is the body of Tom Fox."

Fox's three colleagues from the Chicago-based Christian Peacemaker Teams, a group that dispatches volunteers to crisis areas in a bid to reduce armed conflict, appeared Tuesday in a video broadcast by Al-Jazeera television. Fox was not with them.