Hometowns mourn slain US troops

Both families spoke with pride of their sons

Family and friends of two US soldiers taken captive and killed in Iraq have been paying tribute to them.

"Our son... died for the freedom of everybody in the United States," Thomas Tucker's father Wes told NBC.

Iraqi officials said Pte Tucker and Pte Kristian Menchaca of the 101st Airborne Division, whose bodies were found on Monday, had been tortured.

Pte Menchaca's family remembered a quiet young man who was proud to be in the United States military.

Pte Menchaca, 23, from Houston in Texas and 25-year-old Pte Tucker from Madras, Oregon, went missing during an attack on a checkpoint south of Baghdad on Friday. Another soldier, Spc David Babineau was killed in the attack.

An insurgent group linked to al-Qaeda in Iraq, which claimed it abducted the men, said in an unauthenticated statement on a website that it killed them.

Grief and anger at the deaths of Menchaca (left) and Tucker

The bodies of the two privates had been booby-trapped, a US statement said.

Their remains are to be flown back to Dover in Delaware for positive identification through autopsies and genetic testing.

Wes Tucker spoke about his son's devotion to his work.

"I'm sure that he might have been a little scared, but he took it on as a job, a job that needed to be done."

And people in his hometown of Madras voiced dismay at news of his death.

"Tom was a good boy, it just touched me that it was one of ours, so a little bit different when it is so close to home," Madras mayor Frank Morton told AP Television.

Smile

Pte Menchaca's family gathered in Brownsville to remember him.

"Every time you saw him, it was always with a smile. We never growing up saw him angry, we never saw him upset. Every time you hung around him, you couldn't help but smile," his cousin Sylvia Grice said.

Pte Menchaca had married his 18-year-old wife weeks before being deployed to Iraq, relatives said.

As well as pride and grief, there was also anger from the families.

Ken MacKenzie, uncle of Kristian Menchaca, said on US television: "Because the US government did not have a plan in place, my nephew has paid for it with his life."