A video posted Monday on a Web site showed the beheading of a man identified as American civil engineer Eugene Armstrong. The militant group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi claimed responsibility for the slaying and said another hostage - either an American or a Briton - would be killed in 24 hours. The grisly decapitation was the latest killing in a particularly violent month in Iraq, with more than 300 people dead in insurgent attacks and U.S. military strikes over the past seven days. Earlier Monday, gunmen in Baghdad assassinated two clerics from a powerful Sunni Muslim group that has served as a mediator to release hostages. The video of the beheading of the man believed to be Armstrong surfaced soon after the expiration of a 48-hour deadline set earlier by al-Zarqawi's Tawhid and Jihad group for the beheading of the three civil engineers. The men - Armstrong, American Jack Hensley and Briton Kenneth Bigley - were abducted Thursday from their home in a wealthy Baghdad neighborhood. A militant whose voice resembled al-Zarqawi, who has been linked to al-Qaida, read a statement in the video saying the next hostage would be killed in 24 hours. [more
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