Russian hostages slain as Iraq PM talks peace

The Al-Qaeda-led Mujahedeen Shura (consultative) Council in Iraq claimed Sunday it killed the four hostages, saying Russia had failed to meet its demand to withdraw from Chechnya and free Muslim prisoners.

A statement issued along with a gruesome Internet video showing two of the hostages being executed said: "We present the implementation of Allah's rule against the Russian diplomats to comfort the believers."

"It is also in revenge for our brothers and sisters and what they suffer of torture, killing and displacement by the infidel Russian government."

The videotape showed four hostages speaking in separate messages dated June 13, before two of them were shown being killed and another after his murder.

The first was held on his knees in front of two masked black-clad men, one of whom produced a knife and beheaded the captive. Another body was shown lying in a pool of blood with its severed head placed on its back.

A third hostage was shown kneeling handcuffed and blindfolded before being shot in the head. There was no sign of the fourth.

Fyodor Zaytsev, Rinat Aglyulin, Anatoly Smirnov and Oleg Fedosseyev were abducted on June 3 when gunmen ambushed their vehicle in the upscale west Baghdad district of Mansur. A fifth diplomat, Vitaly Titov, was killed.

The brutal murders come a little more than a week after two US soldiers were found dead with their throats slit after being kidnapped by the same group on June 16.

The video was a chilling reminder of the deadly campaign of hostage-takings and beheadings that was unleashed across Iraq by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, who was killed in a US air strike on June 7.

A few weeks before his death, more than a dozen heads were found in vegetable and fruit boxes lying in open fields in the ethnically volatile town of Baquba, north of Baghdad, while dozens of headless corpses have been recovered from the Tigris river.

More than 40 foreigners are currently held captive across Iraq by various rebel groups, while thousands of Iraqis have also been abducted in the last year alone, largely for ransom, with some abducted more than once.

The executions, and the killing at least 21 Iraqis in attacks Sunday, came as Maliki unveiled a national reconciliation plan in a bid to curb the raging violence.