DOHA, Oct 10 (AFP) - An Islamist group in Iraq announced Sunday it had released 10 Turkish hostages after their company pulled out of the country, Al-Jazeera television reported, although there was no immediate confirmation.
"An armed group calling itself Salafist Abu Bakr al-Seddiq Group released 10 Turkish hostages it had been holding for 40 days," the Qatar-based channel said.
"The group said in a statement that the 10 were freed after the Turkish company (employing them) stopped operations and totally pulled out of Iraq," Al-Jazeera added.
However, the Turkish foreign ministry said it was not able to confirm the release. "We are trying to confirm it with our embassy in Baghdad, to check whether the report is credible," a spokesman said.
Iraq has been plagued by a hostage-taking epidemic, terrorizing hundreds of foreigners and locals. Some have been released -- many for ransom -- others executed and the fate of the rest is unknown.
The reported release came as a grisly video showing British hostage Kenneth Bigley being beheaded appeared on the Internet, amid reports that he made a brief break for freedom, possibly with the help of British intelligence services.
In the video Bigley made a desperate, final appeal for British Prime Minister Tony Blair to save his life before he was killed.
Bigley was abducted in Baghdad on September 16 by the hardline Tawhid wal Jihad (Unity and Holy War) insurgent group along with two US colleagues who were beheaded last month.
Turkish nationals, driving convoys of supplies across Iraq to US army bases, are an easy target, with five drivers known to have been kidnapped and killed.
A Turkish construction company announced on September 21 that it was freezing its activities in Iraq after 10 of its workers were taken hostage.
"We are suspending our activities in Iraq... until the injustice against our company and 10 innocent Turkish workers is undone," Ali Haydar Veziroglu, the chairman of the Ankara-based Vinsan company, said in a statement.
His announcement came three days after Al-Jazeera reported that the Salafist group said it kidnapped 10 employees of a US-Turkish company and threatened to kill them unless the firm halted its operations in Iraq within three days.
Veziroglu said Vinsan has no US partner in its 161-million dollar project to build a highway near Baghdad.
Meanwhile, two Lebanese staff of a travel agency who went missing in Iraq almost a month ago are expected to be released by their kidnappers soon, a lawyer for their employer said Sunday.
Aram Nalbandian and Sharbel Karam al-Hadj will be freed "in the next few hours" Yasser Ali Ahmed, lawyer for the CC travel agency told AFP after speaking to the firm's owner in Iraq.
However, he declined to give details about the kidnappers or any conditions for the release of the two men, who went mising on September 18.
A total of six Lebanese nationals are being held hostage or have been reported missing in Iraq. In all, 26 have been kidnapped since the fall of Saddam Hussein in April last year, one of whom was killed by his abductors.