Pictures of captured U.S. soldiers taken from the footage aired by the Iraqi TV

BAGHDAD, March (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Al-Jazeera TV on Sunday, March 23, broadcast images of several dead bodies of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq, along with five others captured, including two wounded, one of them a woman.

The bodies shown were wearing bloodstained camouflage uniforms and some appeared to have bullet wounds to the head.

Three of the captured soldiers said they were from Texas, including the woman who identified herself as Shauna, aged 30, and one, a sergeant who identified himself as James Reilly, from New Jersey, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

Both were from the 507th Maintenance Company.

The Arabic language television network said the soldiers were captured on the outskirts of Nasiriyah in central Iraq.

Peter C. Miller of Kansas was asked in English why he had come to fight the Iraqi people, with Iraqi television microphones in front of him.

"I didn't come here to kill anyone. I was told to shoot only if shot at," he said.

A soldier who gave his first name as Joseph and said he was from Texas told the journalists: "I follow orders."

Asked repeatedly if the Iraqi people he encountered greeted him with flowers or guns he replied: "I don't understand."

Another soldier named Edgar from Texas had a facial wound and said through an interpreter that he had arrived in Iraq from Kuwait.

Asked in Washington to comment on the videotape, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld allowed that a small number of U.S. troops were missing and may have been captured by Iraq but said the tape was nothing but Iraqi propaganda.

"It seems to me that showing a few pictures on the screen, not knowing who they are and being communicated by Al-Jazeera, which is not a perfect instrument of communication, obviously is part of Iraqi propaganda," he told CBS television's "Face the Nation" program.

A grim-faced Rumsfeld said that the video would be a violation of international rules of war as laid out in the Geneva Conventions, a sentiment echoed by General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

"This is just one more crime by the Iraqi regime," CNN quoted Myers as saying to reporters in a Pentagon corridor.

The Pentagon confirmed that about 10 U.S. soldiers reported missing in southern Iraq have been taken prisoner and has begun notifying their families, CNN reported.

The all-news network said the families had begun to be notified shortly after the videotape of interviews with men and women who appeared to be captured U.S. soldiers was broadcast.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon said that a plane reported missing by Rumsfeld on Sunday was a British Tornado accidentally hit by a U.S. missile and did not refer to speculation that a plane had been shot down over Baghdad.

Iraqi troops searched the sides of the Tigris River in Baghdad on Sunday amid reports that a U.S. or British plane had been shot down.

General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on one U.S. television channel that all U.S. and British planes had been accounted for.

But speaking on a different network, Rumsfeld said later "there has been a report that an aircraft that is missing." But he would not comment on images of Iraqi troops searching in Baghdad.

Colonel Catherine Abbott, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said Rumsfeld was referring to the British Tornado that was mistakenly shot down over the Gulf by a U.S. Patriot missile.

She said no other coalition aircraft have been reported missing.

A report on Al-Jazeera television said two men had been captured, but they were not immediately seen on the screen.