TWELVE kidnapped Nepalese labourers have been murdered in Iraq, according to an Islamic website which yesterday posted pictures of gunmen beheading and shooting their captives before parading their bodies.

The largest mass killing of foreign hostages in Iraq added to a crisis in France where the Government was striving to save two French journalists whose captors set last night as a deadline for killing them.

Palestinian suicide bombers capped a grim day in the Middle East by mounting their first successful operation since March and their deadliest since last October. Hamas militants killed at least 16, including a three-year-old boy and injured more than 90 in attacks on two buses in the Israeli city of Beersheba.

In Moscow last night at least ten people were killed and 51 injured when a woman suicide bomber attacked a metro station. Suspicion fell on militants fighting for Chechen independence.

The Nepalese victims were cooks and cleaners from rural villages who may have been tricked into going to Iraq by a Jordanian manpower agency.They were kidnapped on August 19 as their convoy drove towards Baghdad down one of the most dangerous highways in Iraq.

In a four-minute video released yesterday by a group calling itself the Army of Ansar al-Sunna, a hooded man used a knife to slit the throat of one blindfolded Nepali lying on the ground with his hands tied. The knifeman then displayed his head to the camera.

A man with an assault rifle was shown shooting into the back of the heads of the other 11 hostages who lay face down in a sandy ditch. Video footage and photographs showed the bodies covered in blood and bullet wounds.

The killings double to 24 the number of hostages murdered in Iraq in a tactic that has stalled reconstruction, frightened investors, raised security costst and left major roads virtually impassable.

The Army of Ansar al-Sunna said in a statement: “We have carried out the sentence of God against 12 Nepalis who came from their country to fight the Muslims and to serve the Jews and the Christians . . . believing in Buddha as their God. Our brothers, do not feel any mercy or pity for these nasty and spiteful people. They have left their homes and their countries and crossed thousands of kilo metres to work for the American crusader forces and to support their war against Islam and the Mujahidin.”

Shocked relatives in Nepal claimed that the victims believed they were going to work in Jordan for $2,500 a month — a fortune to them. The family of one, Ramesh Khadka, said that he had taken a loan of more than $2,000 to travel to work as a cook.

Prakash Sharat Mahat, Nepal’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, accused employment agencies of exploiting Nepal’s poverty. “It is highly deplorable that manpower companies have deceived these people by sending them to Iraq after they went to Jordan,” he said.

The Nepalese Government, which declined to contribute troops to Iraq, condemned the murders as a “barbarian act of terrorism”.

The French Government, which also opposed the Iraq war, spent yesterday frantically mustering support from Arab allies to convince a separate group, the Islamic Army of Iraq, that killing the journalists would not help its cause.

The group has demanded that France lift its ban on Muslim headscarves in schools by last night. Michel Barnier, France’s Foreign Minister, shuttled between Jordan and Egypt. A leading diplomat and an intelligence official were sent to Baghdad.

The Iranian government, the Palestinian militant group Hamas, the Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat and Sunni and Shia leaders in Iraq appealed for the release of Christian Chesnot, 37, of Radio France International, and Georges Malbrunot, 41, of Le Figaro.

“We are entirely concentrated on securing their release,” President Chirac said after meeting President Putin of Russia and Gerhard Schröder, the German Chancellor.

As many as 80 foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq, and those killed include two Americans, two Pakistanis, a South Korean and two Italians. The most recent victim, the Italian journalist Enzo Baldoni, was killed last Thursday by the same group holding the French journalists.

Al-Arabiya satellite channel raised hopes by predicting the journalists’ imminent release, but as night fell in Iraq there was no breakthrough.

Iraq’s most senior Sunni clerics’ organisation joined the appeals for the journalists’ release. Mohammed Bashar al-Faidi, of the Muslim Scholars Association, said: “Our priority is to drive out the occupation, so we have to gain support. Killing these two hostages will cause Iraq’s isolation.”

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