BAGHDAD, Iraq – An Indiana man, scared and clutching his passport to his chest, was shown at gunpoint on a videotape aired by Al-Jazeera television yesterday, two days after he was kidnapped from a water treatment plant near Baghdad. The station said he pleaded for his life and urged American troops to withdraw from Iraq.

America said it would maintain its policy of not negotiating with kidnappers.

In LaPorte, Ind., a yellow ribbon was tied around a tree outside Jeffrey Ake’s one-story brick house, and an American flag fluttered on a pole from the home. The U.S. Embassy said the man on the video appeared to be Mr. Ake, a contract worker who was kidnapped around noon Monday.

The video came on a day of bloody attacks, as insurgents blew up a fuel tanker in Baghdad, killed 12 policemen in Kirkuk, and drove a car carrying a bomb into an American convoy, killing five Iraqis and wounding four American contract workers on the capital’s infamous airport road.

Mr. Ake – the 47-year-old president and CEO of Equipment Express, a company that manufactures bottled water equipment – is the latest of more than 200 foreigners seized in Iraq in the past year.

The Al-Jazeera tape showed a man sitting behind a desk with at least three assailants – two hooded and one off camera – pointing assault rifles at him. Mr. Ake, wearing an open-collar shirt with rolled-up shirt sleeves, was sitting or kneeling behind a wooden desk and holding what appeared to be a photo and a passport.

The station didn’t air audio of the video, but said the man asked the American government to begin talks with the Iraqi resistance and save his life. No group claimed responsibility, and there was no way to authenticate the video. Al-Jazeera didn’t say how it obtained the tape.

President Bush’s press secretary, Scott McClellan, said there would be no negotiating with the kidnappers.

“Any time there is a hostage – an American hostage – it is a high priority for the United States,” he said. “Our position is well known when it comes to negotiating. Obviously this is a sensitive matter.”

Secretary of State Rice said American officials were thoroughly engaged with Iraqi officials and others in trying to secure the hostage’s release.

“Obviously, the United States continues to hold to a policy that we do not negotiate with terrorists,” Ms. Rice told reporters after meeting Italian Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini. “It only encourages them.”

In Indiana, LaPorte Police Chief David Gariepy met with Mr. Ake’s family and called it “a terrible situation.”

“We have to keep them in our thoughts and pray for his safe return,” Chief Gariepy said. “It devastates all of us as Americans when someone from our country is involved in something like this.” Chief Gariepy asked for those in the community about 25 miles west of South Bend to “hope and pray and wait.”

Mr. Ake’s company had been working as part of the effort to rebuild Iraq. In 2003, Equipment Express built a machine that filled containers with cooking oil to be used by Iraqis. The company also built a system to provide water bottles to be sold in Baghdad.

Mr. Ake is one of at least 14 Americans who have been kidnapped or have gone missing in the past year in Iraq. At least three have been killed. Last April, Nicholas Berg, a 26-year-old businessman from West Chester, Pa., was the first to be kidnapped. He was beheaded by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s Al Qaeda in Iraq group.

One of the Americans still being held was kidnapped last month along with three Romanian journalists. The Romanian government said yesterday it was in direct contact with their abductors, and that the four were being treated well.

Al Qaeda in Iraq said in an Internet statement that it carried out yesterday’s deadly car bombing, which the military said damaged two sport-utility vehicles and five civilian cars. The explosion left charred and burning rubble strewn across the highway.

“A member of our martyrdom seekers’ brigade mingled in an American military convoy at the airport road and exploded himself, destroying the infidels,” said the statement, which could not be independently verified.

The car bomb was among four explosions in central Baghdad early yesterday, the military said. The second was a car bombing that didn’t cause any damage, and the third was a “secondary explosion” nearby, the military said.

The military gave no information on the fourth explosion, but twin blasts set a fuel tanker ablaze as it made its way through eastern Baghdad. Clouds of black smoke billowed from the site.

Near the northern city of Kirkuk, 12 policemen who had gathered to help dismantle an apparent decoy bomb were killed by another explosion yesterday, police said. Three others were wounded.