Iraqi militants deny killing US Marine

BEIRUT -- A militant group denied yesterday that it killed US Marine Corporal Wassef Ali Hassoun, injecting hope into his family's tense wait for news. The fate of the Lebanese-born Marine is unknown, although Lebanon's Foreign Ministry says he is believed dead.

The Ansar al-Sunna Army denied the killing a day after a statement in the group's name announced that Hassoun had been beheaded. The Ansar al-Sunna said yesterday the group did not issue the statement, leaving it unclear if the 24-year-old was killed by another group or is alive.

"The denial gave us a big relief," Hassoun's brother, Sami Hassoun, said by telephone from the northern city of Tripoli, where some of Hassoun's relatives live.

But with conflicting reports and no hard evidence, the family is afraid for Hassoun's life and was still reeling yesterday from the possibility he had been beheaded.

"We are hoping that good news will come later tonight that Wassef is alive, God willing," Sami Hassoun said. He renewed his appeal to the kidnappers to release his brother.

Wassef Hassoun was reported killed in a message posted Saturday on Islamic radical websites, signed by the Ansar al-Sunna Army in Qaim, a hotbed of guerrilla activity on Iraq's border with Syria. That name was different from the one given in the statement that initially announced Hassoun's abduction a week ago.

The Lebanese Foreign Ministry announced yesterday that it had independent information from Baghdad that he had been killed.

But yesterday, after strongly condemning the death, Foreign Minister Jean Obeid later said news of the death "was not official."

Obeid said the Lebanese charge d'affaires in Baghdad was "in contact with some forces that have indirect links to the [kidnappers], and these forces say they lost hope in all attempts [to win his release] and by last night the group was about to behead him or had already beheaded him."

The US military in Baghdad said it was checking into the report of Hassoun's death but had no confirmation.

In its statement yesterday on its official website, the Ansar al-Sunna Army -- which has taken responsibility for suicide bombings and other attacks in the past -- said it had nothing to do with the report of Hassoun's slaying the day before.

"To maintain our credibility in all issues, we declare that this statement that was attributed to us has no basis of truth," it said.

It added, "Any statement that is not issued through our site doesn't represent us."

In West Jordan, Utah -- where Hassoun lived with his eldest brother Mohammed after moving to the United States in the early 1990s -- relatives were in seclusion since the posting of the death report Saturday. A telephone message left early yesterday morning at Mohammed Hassoun's home was not immediately returned.

On Saturday, Shuaib-Ud Din, the imam at Khadeeja mosque in nearby West Valley City, met with Hassoun's family members for about 15 minutes at their home, where Boy Scouts in recent days had decorated the yard with about two dozen flags.

At a news conference at the mosque, the imam said family members were praying and awaiting official word of Hassoun's fate. He cautioned the public against automatically believing reports out of the Middle East. "Every family has a different way of dealing with the crisis. This family prefers less attention," Din said.

Hassoun, fluent in Arabic, French, and English, was serving in the Marines as a translator in his second stint in Iraq.

The initial report of Hassoun's abduction was issued in the name of Islamic Response, the security wing of the National Islamic Resistance -- 1920 Revolution Brigades, rather than the Ansar al-Sunna Army. On June 27, the Arab television station Al-Jazeera broadcast a videotape showing Hassoun blindfolded, along with a statement from militants threatening to kill him unless the United States releases all Iraqis in "occupation jails."