2 of 3 Missing U.S. Soldiers May Be Alive
Military widens search, also reports several new U.S troop deaths.
May 19, 2007 — -- There is information suggesting two of the three U.S. soldiers missing in Iraq are still alive and "suspicion" that one may have been killed sometime after capture, a senior military official told ABC News.
The official said the information is "based on intel" gathered "over the last day or so."
However, the source added, "Until there is definitive evidence to the contrary ... we are working on the assumption that all three are still alive."
Last weekend, three U.S. soldiers -- Spc. Alex Jimenez, Pfc. Joseph Anzack and Pvt. Byron Fouty -- were abducted during an attack in an area known as the Triangle of Death. As the search moves into its second week, the U.S. military widened its focus today, detaining nine people in Amiriyah, 25 miles from where the three soldiers were taken.
The military has interviewed hundreds of people in the area where the attack happened and offered a $200,000 reward for information leading to the missing men. They have received plenty of tips, but many never panned out. Soldiers drained a canal to look for bodies, but found nothing. Reports of sightings of Americans turned out to be erroneous. Some houses have been searched several times over, always turning up nothing.
The military still believes an al Qaeda-affiliated group captured the soldiers, but there has been no more information from that group since their claim early last week to be holding the men.
"We know who that guy is," Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, told the Army Times on Friday. "He's sort of an affiliate of al Qaeda. ... He's the big player down in that area. We've tangled with him before.
"Somebody's given us the names of all the guys that participated in it and told us how they did it, and all the rest of that stuff," he continued. "Now, we have to verify that at some point in time, but it sounds spot on. We've had all kinds of tips down there. ... We just tragically haven't found the individuals. But on the other hand, they haven't been able to smuggle out, at least to my knowledge, the traditional video."
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