Pray for our son, Marine family urge

The family of a US marine held hostage in Iraq today begged for the world to pray his captors will drop their threat to behead him.

Militants who abducted Corporal Wassef Ali Hassoun - a fluent Arabic speaker of Lebanese descent - have said they will decapitate him unless all Iraqi prisoners are released by coalition forces.

No deadline was given, but there is little prospect their demands will be met as a symbolically important Nato conference in Turkey draws to its close tomorrow.

It is the first time a coalition soldier has been put under threat of decapitation after being held in this way.

Cpl Hassoun, from Utah, was captured after being lured from his base and a video of the blindfolded soldier and his ID card has been aired on al-Jazeera television.

The US army said the marine, on his second tour of duty in Iraq, had been missing from his base west of Fallujah since last Monday.

Speaking from the Hassoun home in West Jordan, a suburb of Salt Lake City, family spokesman Tarek Nosseir said: "We pray and plead for his safe release, and we ask all people of the world to join us in our prayers."

Cpl Hassoun's former sister-inlaw Judy Hassoun described him as "very peaceful, very brave, very loving".

In the video, Cpl Hassoun - a member of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force - is shown dressed in army fatigues and holding an active duty ID card. A hand is seen holding a sword above his head.

The captors identified themselves as part of "Islamic Response", the security wing of the "National Islamic Resistance - 1920 Revolution Brigades". The name refers to an uprising against the British occupation after the First World War. The threat to kill Cpl Hassoun comes as death threats against other hostages, and attacks on coalition targets, accelerate in the run- up to today's handover of sovereignty in Iraq.

Three Turkish hostages face beheading tomorrow after their government rejected terrorist demands to stop co-operating with US forces. Last Tuesday militants decapitated South Korean contractor-Kim Sun-il after his government rejected demands to drop plans to send more troops.

Mr Kim's murder followed the beheading of US hostage Nicholas Berg in Iraq last month.

Shortly before footage of Cpl Hassoun was aired, al-Arabiya TV broadcast a video from unidentified militants claiming to have taken a Pakistani driver hostage 50 miles north of Baghdad. He is also threatened with decapitation.

The tape showed a man holding an ID card from US contractor Kellogg, Brown and Root, which provides support to the US military.

The hostage, a Muslim who gave his name as Amjad, said: "They are going to cut the head of any person regardless of whether he is a Muslim or not."