BAGHDAD (AFP) - Brutal death at the hands of Islamist militants looked inevitable for another Western hostage, whose colleague was beheaded a day earlier, as US President George W. Bush defended the war in Iraq and asked for more foreign help in the country.
The Tawhid wal Jihad group, which claimed the execution of US contractor Eugene Armstrong on Monday, had given the coalition 24 hours to release all the women it detains in Iraq and save the lives of a second American and a Briton kidnapped along with him last week.
But with the two main powers behind the invasion of Iraq standing firm, no sign of talks to free the hostages and the clock ticking, the lives of British engineer Kenneth Bigley and American Jack Hensley hung by a thread.
Bigley`s family made a poignant plea for British Prime Minister Tony Blair to meet the militants` demands to free the surviving captives, piling the pressure on the coalition to compromise.
His son, Craig, told BBC television: "I ask Tony Blair personally to consider the amount of bloodshed already suffered.
"Please meet the demands and release my father -- two women for two men ... Only you can save him now. You have children and you will understand how I feel at this time."
Based on the video obtained by the Arab news channel Al-Jazeera Monday night, US Central Intelligence Agency experts concluded Tuesday that Tawhid wal Jihad chief Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi himself sawed off Armstrong`s head.
Armstrong, who counts among at least 27 foreign hostages murdered here since April, was the second American beheaded in Iraq after 26-year-old Jewish businessman Nicholas Berg, decapitated in May by Zarqawi`s faction.
The video fit the pattern of hostage taking and murder, where abduction is now used as a political tool to intimidate those participating in US efforts to rebuild Iraq.
Against the shocking backdrop of kidnappings and killings, Bush insisted Tuesday that the war in Iraq was justified and demanded more UN action to help end the deadly chaos.
And he told the UN General Assembly in a speech to step up support for Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi`s fledgling government.
Allawi`s government "has earned the support of every nation that believes in self-determination and desires peace," Bush said in speech to the assembly`s opening session.
"The UN and its member nations must respond to Prime Minister Allawi`s request and do more to help build an Iraq that is secure, democratic, federal and free," Bush said to a tepid response from the chamber.
The president was firing back after UN Secretary General Kofi Annan had said the Bush administration had nothing to boast about in Iraq and compared the abuse of prisoners by US soldiers to the killings perpetrated by radical insurgents.
Bush had also come under scathing criticism from his Democrat election rival, Senator John Kerry, who accused him of leading the United States into an endless war and failing to meet the aspirations of the Iraqi population.
Allawi was due to arrive in the United States Tuesday after vowing during a visit to London that January national elections would go forward despite the soaring violence.
Meanwhile, two senior aides to Moqtada Sadr were arrested in a predawn raid by US troops on the radical Shiite cleric`s office in the central city of Najaf.
"A group of US marines raided the office of Sayed Sadr at 2:00 am (2200 GMT Monday) and arrested Sheikh Ahmed al-Shaibani and Hosam al-Husseini and a number of other workers in the office," said Abu Sadeq al-Adhari, an official in Sadr`s office.
The US military in Baghdad was unable to confirm the raid and the arrests, which come two days after the arrest of a senior Sadr official in Baghdad.
Bloodshed, which has already claimed more than 400 lives this month, showed no signs of abating.
In two separate attacks in the restive town of Baquba, northeast of Baghdad, an Iraqi civilian was killed and eight injured and two Iraqi national guardsmen killed.
A roadside bomb exploded in the path of an Iraqi police patrol, killing a civilian and injuring five others according to witnesses, while a spokesman for the national guard in Baquba said two of its members and a civilian were injured in another roadside bombing late Monday.
Four US soldiers were injured, one seriously, in a suicide car bomb attack on their patrol on the road to Baghdad airport, the US military said.
Seven to nine civilians were taken to hospital, an interior ministry spokesman said.
And two US marines were killed in clashes in restive Al-Anbar province in western Iraq, the US military announced Tuesday.
According to Pentagon figures, the latest deaths bring to 1,035 the number of US troops killed in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion.