BAGHDAD (AFP) – A Bulgarian truck driver held hostage in Iraq has been executed, his government confirmed yesterday. It is the third beheading of a foreigner in this war-torn country attributed to Islamist extremists.

“We have confirmation that (the killing) involves one of the two Bulgarian hostages. We do not yet have information about which one of the two it is,” the Bulgarian government spokesman in Sofia, Dimitar Tsonev, told AFP.

“All Bulgarian institutions have done everything possible. Now all we can do for the next 24 hours is to pray for the life of the second Bulgarian hostage,” he said.

But he called efforts to negotiate the men’s release or rescue “very uneven”.

The Arab satellite television Al-Jazeera earlier said it had received a video of the execution purportedly made by the Tahid wal Jihad group (Unity and Holy War) of suspected al-Qaeda operative Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi.

The group threatened to kill the other Bulgarian hostage it is holding unless its demand was met for the release within 24 hours of Iraqi prisoners detained by the US military in Iraq, Al-Jazeera said.

Truck drivers Ivailo Kepov et Georgy Lazov were taken hostage near the northern Iraqi town of Mosul last Thursday.

In what was believed to be footage of the Bulgarians, Al-Jazeera television last week showed two men, squatting and handcuffed, held by masked men of Tahid wal Jihad.

But the Bulgarian government, which has 470 soldiers in Iraq, had vowed not to bow to “blackmail”.

The Iraqi government said earlier yesterday, before the Doha-based Al-Jazeera broke the news, that the two Bulgarians as well as a Filipino hostage were believed to be still alive.

In May, 26 year-old US national Nicholas Berge was beheaded by his captors in Iraq and a video of his execution attributed to Zarqawi, who has a US $25-million bounty on his head, was circulated on the Internet.

And at the end of last month, Zarqawi’s group sent Al-Jazeera a video of South Korean hostage Kim Sun-Il being beheaded after Seoul turned down its demand for the withdrawal of its forces from Iraq.

As in the case of the Bulgarian, Al-Jazeera decided at the time not to broadcast the video.

With the life of a kidnapped Filipino also on the line, the Philippines sent out ambiguous and contradictory signals yesterday on the hostage takers’ key demand for an early withdrawal of troops from Iraq.

The Philippine official dealing with the hostage crisis, Foreign Undersecretary Rafael Seguis, went on Arabic television station Al-Jazeera Monday to appeal for the life of father-of-eight Angelo de la Cruz.