BAGHDAD, March 11: The body of a kidnapped American peace activist was found bound and shot in Baghdad, police said on Saturday, as US President George W. Bush vowed to do everything possible to avert a civil war.

Sunni Arab and Shia political leaders, struggling to break a deadlock over the formation of a national unity government, held coalition talks for the first time since the bombing of an important Shia mosque set off a wave of sectarian violence.

Reprisal killings, which cost hundreds of lives and plunged Iraq into its worst crisis since US-led forces invaded three years ago, prompted Sunni parties to boycott negotiations.

Police said Tom Fox, kidnapped in November with three colleagues by a group calling itself the Swords of Truth, was discovered on Thursday with his hands tied and a single gunshot wound to the head at a garbage dump in western Baghdad.

Fox, who had been in Iraq to campaign against the “dehumanisation” of the US occupation, appeared to have been beaten with electric cables before his death, according to a policeman who found the body beside a railway line.

The kidnappers — one of many armed groups that have seized more than 200 foreigners and thousands of Iraqis since the US-led invasion — had threatened to kill the four, members of the Christian Peacemaker Teams, unless US forces and the Iraqi authorities freed all prisoners in their custody.

A US embassy spokeswoman said Fox’s body was on its way back to the United States. She had no comment on his death.

Fears about Fox’s fate were raised earlier this week when Arabic television station Al Jazeera aired a video dated Feb 28 showing only fellow kidnapped activists Briton Norman Kember and Canadians James Loney and Harmeet Sooden.

There was no word on Saturday on the fate of the three, who looked well in the video and did not appear distressed.

US officials said they were still working to free US journalist Jill Carroll, kidnapped in Baghdad on Jan 7, but had no new information. Her kidnappers had threatened to kill her by Feb 26 unless US forces released women detainees.

—Reuters