Kidnapped U.S. Soldier Seen in Video

Kidnapped U.S. Soldier Seen Alive in Video

April 16?- U.S. military officials have seen video of an American soldier who was taken hostage in Iraq, ABCNEWS has learned.

A senior military official told ABCNEWS that the soldier in the video was one of two GIs who disappeared on April 9, during the same convoy attack in which seven employees of a Halliburton subcontractor went missing.

They were part of a supply convoy that was traveling on Highway One about seven miles west of Baghdad, headed toward Abu Ghraib, last Friday when they were attacked by RPGs, mortars and small arms fire.

In the video, the soldier is seen talking, the military official said. The Arabic television channel Al Jazeera said it has a copy of the tape and plans to air it today.

The two soldiers who went missing in the April 9 attack are Sgt. Elmer C. Krause, 40, of Greensboro, N.C., and Pfc. Keith M. Maupin, 20, of Batavia, Ohio. Both soldiers were assigned to the Army Reserve's 724th Transportation Company, based in Bartonville, Ill. The official did not say which of the soldiers appeared in the video, but said parents of both have been notified of the tape.

The two have been missing since their convoy came under attack by individuals using rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire.

One of the U.S. civilians missing since that attack, Thomas Hamill, a 43-year-old truck driver from Mississippi, is known to have been abducted and U.S. experts in Iraq are trying to determine if four bodies discovered west of Baghdad earlier this week were the remains of some of the missing contractors.

www.abcnews.com