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Dated 28 January with the caption “Brigades of Vengeance,” the grainy tape shows Jill Carroll wearing a white headscarf and weeping and pleading but her voice is not heard.
The freelance journalist was seized on January 7 in Baghdad by armed men who shot dead her interpreter.
After three weeks in captivity, she has reiterated her call on the United States to release Iraqi women prisoners to help secure her freedom.
According to Al-Jazeera, she appealed to her family, colleagues and Americans throughout the world to ask the US military authorities and the Iraqi interior ministry to free all Iraqi prisoners.
Her captors had threatened to kill her if their demand was not met by 20 January.
The deadline was set in an earlier video.
But if the latest video is authentic, it provides the first sign that the threat was not carried out.
The Christian Science Monitor which employed her, expressed distress for her welfare.
“Anyone with a heart will feel distressed that an innocent woman like Jill Carroll would be treated in the manner shown in the latest video,” said the newspaper’s editor, Richard Bergenheim.
“We add our voice to those Arabs around the world, and especially to those in Iraq, who have condemned this act of kidnapping,” he said.
Injured TV crew evacuated
There are also grave concerns for US television anchor Bob Woodruff and his cameraman Doug Vogt who were admitted to an American hospital in Germany after being seriously wounded in a bombing in Iraq.
Mr Woodruff and Mr Vogt were both in intensive care at the Landstuhl hospital in southwestern Germany, the biggest American medical facility outside of the US.
The veteran news journalists who work for the American ABC network, were traveling with a US army convoy when they were hit by a roadside bomb near Taji, just north of Baghdad.
The suffered head wounds and underwent surgery in a US hospital in Iraq before being flown to Germany.
Medical staff at the hospital said that they were in a stable condition following the operations but that the next few days would be critical.
Security stepped up
Amid the ongoing violence, thousands of security personnel have been deployed in southern Iraq ahead of the Shiite festival of Ashura.
Aushura, the 10th day of the Islamic month of Moharram, commemorates the death of the Shiite imams Hassan and Hussein in Karbala in 680 AD at the hands of the Sunni ruler.
Authorities have deployed at least 8,000 police and military personnel to guard the holy city of Karbala during the festival.
Southern Iraq has been the target of fresh insurgent attacks on foreign and Iraqi forces following a recent crack down on the militias in the security forces.
In the past two days, dozens have been killed and scores of others wounded, as rebels struck with car bombs near churches and roadside bombs across the country.