A picture posted on a website shows the bodies of the kidnapped Nepalese men in an undisclosed location. (AFP)

BAGHDAD, 1 September 2004 — An Iraqi group murdered 12 kidnapped Nepalese workers in cold blood yesterday as a new deadline set for two captive French journalists by another group expired.

Ansar Al-Sunna posted pictures on its website of one of the Nepalese being beheaded. “We have carried out the sentence of God against 12 Nepalese who came from their country to fight the Muslims and to serve the Jews and the Christians... believing in Buddha as their God,” the group said in a statement.

The group also posted a series of photographs showing the killing of the hostages as well as a video. The recording showed two masked men, one in camouflage, holding down a hostage. One of the men then used a knife to behead the hostage and then held his head aloft.

The video then showed a group of hostages lying face-down in a dirt pitch being gunned down by a man using an automatic rifle. It then showed bodies splattered with blood and with bullet wounds in the head and back.

“Our brothers, do not feel any mercy or pity for these nasty and spiteful people,” the statement said.

“They have left their homes and their countries and crossed thousands of kilometers to work for the American Crusader forces and to support their war against Islam and the Mujahedeen.”

The Nepalese were taken hostage earlier this month as they entered Iraq to work as cooks and cleaners for a Jordanian company. Ansar Al-Sunna said it had kidnapped them because they were cooperating with US troops in Iraq.

The United States strongly condemned the execution. “We condemn these barbaric acts in the strongest possible terms,” State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.

All of them were last shown in a videotape on Saturday reading a statement saying they had been misled into working in Iraq by “American lies”.

Nepal, which is not part of the US-led coalition in Iraq, had declined US requests to contribute troops to Iraq, saying its army was busy fighting an increasingly bloody domestic Maoist insurgency.

Katmandu urged the international community to take action against those responsible. “This barbarian act of terrorism to kill innocent civilians without asking for any conditions for their release is against the minimum behavior of human civilization,” the Nepalese Foreign Ministry said.

Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi vowed to bring the group to justice. “This is proof that there can be no solution reached with this faction except that they be brought to absolute justice,” Allawi told Arabic television Al-Arabiya.

Meanwhile, fears mounted for two French journalists held hostage by another group calling itself the Army of Iraq, which has already claimed the murder of three foreign hostages.

France mobilized its full diplomatic arsenal in the Middle East to try to secure the release of the two men, facing a late Tuesday deadline to meet kidnappers’ demands to rescind a ban on Islamic head scarves in French government schools.

President Jacques Chirac issued an 11th-hour plea for clemency as Foreign Minister Michel Barnier enlisted help from Amman, and governments and Muslim groups across the globe appealed to their captors to free the pair. Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin presided over an emergency meeting of his Cabinet after Georges Malbrunot and Christain Chesnot warned in a video they could be killed if France did not change its stance on the head scarf issue.

— Additional input from agencies