AL-QAEDA’S organisation in Iraq said yesterday that it had killed Egypt’s Ambassador-designate, five days after kidnapping him in Baghdad.

His death is the first time a foreign diplomat has been abducted and murdered by terrorists in Iraq.

The group, led by the Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, made the claim in footage posted on a website that showed Ihab al-Sherif, the blindfolded envoy, identifying himself and recounting his diplomatic postings. His killing was not shown. The Egyptian embassy in Baghdad declined to comment.

The group said it had waited before announcing that it was behind Mr al-Sherif’s abduction because it wanted “to be able to capture as many ambassadors as we can”.

This week gunmen attacked the envoys of Pakistan and Bahrain in the middle of Baghdad. Bahrain said that the attack on its envoy, who was wounded in the arm, was a botched kidnap attempt.

Iraqi officials said that the attacks were intended to scare off Arab and Muslim countries that are developing closer links with the new Iraqi Government, elected last January in polls that helped to quell accusations that Baghdad’s leadership was a US-installed puppet.

Arab diplomatic sources suggested that the envoy’s abduction and reported killing would have exactly this effect. “There is no way we are sending an ambassador to Baghdad in these circumstances,” said one Arab diplomat based in London.

The internet statement announced that “in the name of al-Qaeda in Iraq, the verdict of God against the ambassador of the infidels, the Ambassador of Egypt, has been carried out. Thank God.

“The ambassador of the infidels has confessed information that showed that his regime is an infidel and which proved his affiliation to the Jews and the Crusaders,” it continued in a familiar attempt to stir up hatred against the region’s undemocratic regimes, many of which, like Egypt, receive substantial US backing.

Mr al-Sherif, a 51-year-old career diplomat, had been kidnapped on Saturday when he went out on his own, unprotected and in a car marked with diplomatic plates, to buy a newspaper. Two cars full of gunmen waylaid him, pistol-whipped him in the street and pushed him into the boot of one of their cars.

His murder was not shown in the video, unlike previous al-Qaeda killings such as that of the British engineer Ken Bigley and a number of Iraqi officials beheaded in gory films posted on the internet.

But a recent al-Qaeda propaganda video released in the so-called Sunni Triangle also edited out the scenes of execution. An insurgent recently told The Times that such scenes were eroding support for the armed group among ordinary Iraqis. Instead, the video showed condemned Iraqi officials making forced confessions surrounded by gunmen.

The attack on senior Muslim diplomats — which came after a lull in a two-month car bombing campaign — appeared to be a new tactic to prevent the Iraqi Government gaining international legitimacy.

Mr al-Sherif was on the way to becoming the first Arab ambassador to postwar Iraq, a clear diplomatic triumph for the Baghdad leadership and its Anglo-American partners. The Pakistani Ambassador has now left the country.

The Iraqi Government has pleaded with other diplomats to stay, and also to reinforce their security arrangements.

Hardline Islamist groups have used kidnapping and murder to political effect in the past in Iraq, prompting the Philippines to quit the US-led coalition last year. The killing of Mr al-Sherif threatens to push that campaign to new extremes. Many ordinary Iraqis are already opposed to kidnappings and beheadings but are reluctant to condemn openly a fellow Muslim group fighting the Americans.

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