A militant group has claimed responsibility for killing a Turkish and an Iraqi hostage, Arab TV networks reported today, after a video showing the killings of two men, who identified themselves as an Italian of Iraqi origin and a Turk, was released.
A militant in the video accused the two of spying. The men were shown blindfolded and kneeling in front of a ditch before being shot.
The Italian Foreign Ministry has told the family of a kidnapped Iraqi businessman who was a long-time resident of Italy that the man has been killed, the businessman's brother said today.
Ajad Anwar Wali was kidnapped at the end of August from his office in Baghdad.
"The Foreign Ministry told me that my brother was killed," Emad Wali said at the family's home in Castelfranco Veneto in north-east Italy.
Ajad Anwar Wali had lived in Italy since the early 1980s and was married to an Italian woman. According to his brother, Wali had formally applied for Italian citizenship and the request had been pending.
The businessman worked for a furniture company, and last week an Italian business association of furniture makers appealed to the Italian government to work for his release.
The appeal came on the heels of the release of two Italian women who were kidnapped in Baghdad, where they had been working as volunteer aid workers.
The Italian government has denied news reports that a million dollars ransom was paid for the women, but a top member of parliament has said he believes the government paid for their release.
Meanwhile, two Indonesian women reported kidnapped last week were freed and arrived at the embassy of the United Arab Emirates in Baghdad, a diplomat at the embassy said.
Their captors, the Islamic Army in Iraq, had demanded that the Indonesian government release a jailed Islamic radical cleric.
However, the cleric, Abu Bakar Bashir - who Washington says is a terror mastermind in Southeast Asia - denounced the abduction as un-Islamic and rejected being released in response to the kidnapping.
The two women, Rosidah binti Anan and Rafikan binti Aming, who had been working as maids in Baghdad, were seen in a video aired in Al-Jazeera last week along with two Lebanese and six Iraqi hostages that the Islamic Army in Iraq claimed to be holding.
The fate of those other eight hostages was not immediately known.