US hostage pleads for life on video

AN AMERICAN contract worker taken hostage in Iraq appealed for his life in a video released yesterday.

The tape emerged on a day of violence in Iraq - bombings left at least 14 people dead. It also coincided with a visit there by the deputy US Secretary of State, Robert Zoellick, the second by a senior US official in as many days.

The video, broadcast by the al-Jazeera television station, showed a man, identified by the American embassy as Jeffrey Ake, from Indiana, sitting behind a desk holding a passport. Armed and masked militants held assault rifles at his head. He was seized on Monday while working on a reconstruction project near the capital, the embassy said.

Al-Jazeera said that Mr Ake "urged the US administration to open a dialogue with the Iraqi resistance ... to save his life" and called on US forces to withdraw swiftly from Iraq. It was not clear which group was behind the abduction.

Militants waged a day of violence across Iraq yesterday, with at least four blasts in Baghdad, where five Iraqis were killed.

Nine oil industry guards died when a bomb they were trying to defuse exploded near Kirkuk.