The Russians were seized in Baghdad's Mansour district
Russia has confirmed that four of its diplomats taken hostage in Iraq are dead, a day after a group announced their deaths in an internet video.
The confirmation came after Russian experts checked the authenticity of the videotape released by the kidnappers.
The Russian foreign ministry expressed "deep pain" that the kidnapping had ended "in an irremediable way" despite efforts to win their release.
A group called the Mujahideen Shura Council released the hostage video.
The insurgent umbrella group is linked to al-Qaeda in Iraq.
The video showed one man being beheaded and another shot dead, as well as the body of a third, but there was no sign of the fourth hostage.
The group had given Russia an ultimatum to withdraw from Chechnya and release Muslim prisoners from Russian jails - or the hostages would die. Chechen rebels said they had no links to the Iraqi group.
The men were seized in Baghdad on 3 June, and the kidnappers said the executions were in revenge for "torture, killing and displacement by the infidel Russian government" in Chechnya.
The Russian foreign ministry said the "terrorists" responsible were "inhuman, without honour, conscience or religion".
It urged the Iraqi authorities and the US-led coalition forces to find and punish the perpetrators.
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Reviewed by Crystal Silver Angel (Reader)
Reviewed on June 26, 2006
Peter, this sickens me to the bare core. I have such sadness towards these situations and some of mankind, I am deeply sad by their forgetting who God created them to be. Still it’s a powerful reason to pray for the souls, their families and pray for this long drawn out war to end of hatred and intolerance. I saw Al Qeada’s number two man yesterday and I looked deep within his eyes. We are all born with powerful light from the Holy Spirit, but this soul had the very paramagnetic view of destruction at it’s biggest. It was as if no soul was in the body, a shell of hatred. God did not make us in the image at our creation of demonic forces. I try to teach the light and that divinity in us and I must teach it further because many are hearing the call, many are flocking and they "get it", the truth and then there are those that see the truth I portray within them and they see light so bright they run and never come back.. I can say I had tried with many.. It is with this knowing they know and then go right back to the intolerance. All I can do is keep praying for all of us to see the greatness within.. If we did there would be no wars, I feel, if we simply knew and respected everyone’s greatness!! WE are not born an monstrous evil thing.. I hope my echo’s reach far as a pebble is dropped in an ocean creating millions of cause and affects for good! Yes, Peter today I will intercede for the country of Russia and the beloved families.. I will pray after I type…May God pour out His wrath of justice..!!
Peace & Healing, Dove
Reviewed by Jerry Bolton (Reader)
Reviewed on June 26, 2006
Yes, and the world would condemn us if we turned that desert into glass. They confemn us anyway, so pull out everybody we don't want dead and DO IT!
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A raw in your face story of teenage love, lust, murder, and revenge set in the Bronx in the early seventies, where the cold business world of organize crime melds with the brutality of street gang warlords that ignites a winner takes all battle for u
PI novel set in Manhattan during the 1980s when art galleries and model agencies were the two most glamorous businesses in the world. Dangerously well written.
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Literary Titan
Peace & Healing, Dove