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Video airs of purported hostages in IraqChristian group denies aid workers are spies
 Men said to be hostages appear in video that aired Tuesday on Arabic-language channel Al-Jazeera. SPECIAL REPORT
• Interactive: Who's who in Iraq
• Interactive: Sectarian divide
• Timeline: Bloodiest days for civilians
YOUR E-MAIL ALERTSBAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Arabic news service Al-Jazeera has aired video from a previously unknown group showing four kidnapped Western aid workers affiliated with a Christian organization in Iraq, along with a statement from the group calling them spies. The Christian Peacemaker Teams has confirmed the men are affiliated with their group and disappeared on Saturday in Baghdad. CNN cannot independently verify the video's authenticity. (Watch the kidnap victims -- 2:25) Separately, eight construction workers were killed Wednesday when gunmen opened fire on a minibus in the Iraqi town of Abu Sayda, just northeast of Baquba, Iraqi police said. The attack occurred about 7:15 a.m. (11:15 p.m. ET). All of the victims were Shia, according to local residents. Christain Peacemaker Teams has identified the missing men as Thomas W. Fox, 54, of Virginia; Dr. Norman Frank Kember, 74, of Britain; James Loney, 41, of Toronto; and Harmeet Singh Sooden, 32, a Canadian who has been studying in New Zealand. Fox, from Clear Brook, Virginia, is a father of two children and has worked with CPT in Iraq for two years, the group said in a written statement. Kember, a pacifist and peace activist from London, is married with two daughters and a 3-year-old grandson. He is a retired professor of medicine. Loney, leader of the CPT delegation, is a community worker who has been a CPT member for more than five years. He has taken testimonies from families of detainees for CPT's report on detainee abuse. Sooden is an electrical engineer studying for a master's degree in English literature at Auckland University. In the four-minute, 40-second video, each man gives his name and age. The camera then pans across 14 identification cards -- including driver's licenses, credit cards and a passport -- from all of the men except Loney. According to Al-Jazeera, the group, which calls itself "The Swords of Justice," said the four worked as spies under the cover of "the Christian Peace group." A spokesman rejected the claim they are spies. "They are not spies; they're committed peaceworkers," said William Payne, a staff member in the group's Chicago office. In a written statement, the group, which also has an office in Toronto, said they were "very saddened to see the images of our loved ones" on Al-Jazeera and blamed the U.S. and British governments for the abductions. "We were disturbed by seeing the video and believe that repeated showing of it will endanger the lives of our friends. We are deeply disturbed by their abduction," the statement said. "We pray that those who hold them will be merciful and that they will be released soon. We want so much to see their faces in our home again, and we want them to know how much we love them, how much we miss them, and how anxious and concerned we are by what is happening to them." The statement added, "We are angry because what has happened to our teammates is the result of the actions of the U.S. and UK government due to the illegal attack on Iraq and the continuing occupation and oppression of its people." The organization's teams have "worked for the rights of Iraqi prisoners who have been illegally detained and abused by the U.S. government. We were the first people to publicly denounce the torture of Iraqi people at the hands of U.S. forces, long before the Western media admitted what was happening at Abu Ghraib." The group had three other members in Baghdad, and there were no immediate plans to remove them, Payne said. In a statement released shortly after the video was aired, the British Foreign Office said, "We utterly condemn the abduction of Norman Kember and his colleagues. The release of this video can only caused further distress to their families at this difficult time." Tuesday's video came shortly after the German government concluded that Susanne Osthoff, 43, and her driver -- both missing in Iraq since Friday -- had been kidnapped. (Details) German public television network ARD said it obtained video showing a kneeling, blindfolded woman and a man surrounded by three armed and masked gunmen. Meanwhile, Iranian state television reported Tuesday that gunmen have released six Iranian pilgrims and an Iraqi woman seized Monday north of Baghdad, according to Reuters. Christian party officials killedGunmen ambushed members of a Christian political party, the Assyrian Democratic movement, in the northern city of Mosul on Tuesday, killing two of them and wounding two others, a hospital official said. The attack happened in northeast Mosul as party officials were putting up posters for the December 15 parliamentary elections, said the official at Jamhouri hospital. The killings come a day after gunmen killed a top Sunni Arab political activist, another sheik and their driver in Zaydun, west of Baghdad. Sheikh Ayad al-Izzi, an Iraqi Islamic Party official, had been involved in the upcoming elections and the development of a new Iraqi constitution. (Full story) Other developmentsCNN's Arwa Damon, Tomas Etzler, Octavia Nasr and Mohammed Tawfeeq contributed to this report. Copyright 2005 CNN. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Associated Press contributed to this report. 
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