WASHINGTON, Nov 25 (AFP) - A US State Department official who worked with the Iraqi ministers of education and higher education was murdered in Baghdad by a group linked to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the group claimed Thursday.
An Islamist website carried a statement Thursday in which Zarqawi's group purportedly claims it murdered an American working with the Iraqi education ministry.
"This morning, the lions of the Al-Qaeda Group of Jihad in the Country of Two Rivers killed in Baghdad an American working as a counselor to the Iraqi ministry of higher education and scientific research," said the statement, whose authenticity could not be verified.
In a statement released late Wednesday, US Secretary of State Colin Powell identified the diplomat as James Mollen, who had volunteered for service in Iraq a year ago. He said Mollen "helped rebuild a country for a captive people who had suffered so much for so long."
"The Department of State and I grieve over this tragic loss," Powell said. "We offer Jim's family and friends our condolences. We, too, have lost one of our own."
Powell said Mollen embodied "the greatest American virtues: courage, commitment, charity and an abiding faith in the promise of a better tomorrow."
The secretary vowed that the American people would maintain Mollen's efforts to improve Iraqi education.
"His State Department colleagues and the American people will not waver in their commitment to building a peaceful and prosperous Iraq," Powell said. "We will stand resolute against the forces that took Jim's life, and we will prevail."
The Press and Sun-Bulletin in Binghamton, New York, where the 48-year-old Mollen grew up, said the State Department told his parents that he was alone in his car when a man in another vehicle shot him in the head. Mollen died instantly, the newspaper said, noting that he was apparently driving just outside the heavily fortified Green Zone at the time.
"He very passionately believed in helping the people of Iraq," Mollen's brother Tim, a Binghamton-based actor, told the daily. "He wanted to help with the reconstruction effort and help the Iraqi people get back on their feet."
On the Islamist website, the group added that with Mollen's killing, the group was continuing to "cut off the heads of the Americans and apostates," a term used to refer to the Iraqi interim government.
11/25/2004 15:31 GMT - AFP