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Twelve Nepalese workers kidnapped by Islamist extremists were murdered on video yesterday in the biggest mass killing of hostages in Iraq since Saddam Hussein was toppled.
The men, who had been kidnapped three weeks earlier as they drove into the country from Jordan, were said to have been murdered by the obscure Ansar al-Sunna Army, a fundamentalist group that claimed responsibility last year for suicide bombings in the Kurdish city of Irbil that killed 109.
The labourers claimed on the video that they had been duped by unscrupulous brokers back home into working in Iraq, believing their destination was Jordan.
The killing doubled the number of hostages murdered in Iraq. It was particularly disturbing because of its extremely brutal manner, the peripheral role of poor Nepalese workers in Iraq and the fact that there were no negotiations or demands beforehand.