UK captive death claim taken seriously

LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Gordon Brown said on Saturday he was taking seriously a claim by militants in Iraq that one of five Britons they are holding hostage has killed himself.

The Sunday Times reported that the kidnappers made the claim in a videotaped statement handed to its representative in Iraq last week.

The statement said one of the hostages, named as Jason, committed suicide on May 25 -- one year after the Britons were seized by a Shi'ite militant group from inside an Iraqi Finance Ministry building in a raid in Baghdad.

"Clearly this is a very distressing development. We are taking this very seriously. There are many people working behind the scenes trying to find a solution," Brown said in a statement.

Brown said he discussed the issue of the five hostages with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in Baghdad on Saturday. "We both share a desire to see them returned safely to their families. I call on those holding the hostages to release them immediately and unconditionally".

A Foreign Office spokesman in London said: "There is no independent verification of the claims in this video, therefore we are not going to comment on its veracity".

Iraq's national security adviser, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, had said in June that the five Britons, who have not been named, were still alive.

There was no news of the men until a video featuring one of them was released last December. It included a statement from the captors threatening to kill him unless Britain pulled its troops out of Iraq.

A second video was released in February, this time featuring a second hostage who appealed for the release of nine Iraqis in return for the Britons' freedom.