GAZA CITY–A Salafist group of radical Islamists killed an Italian activist after kidnapping him in Gaza, a Hamas security official said Friday.
“The Italian was killed by suffocation and his body was found in a street of the city of Gaza,” a spokesman for the Islamist movement which controls the Gaza Strip told AFP.
Two suspected kidnappers were arrested and security officials are looking for accomplices.
Foreign aid workers in the enclave earlier named the man as Vittorio Arrigoni and said he was an activist with a pro-Palestinian group called the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), who was also working as a journalist and writer.
In a video posted on YouTube, the Salafist group said it had taken him hostage in order to secure the release of an unspecified number of their members who had been arrested by the security forces in the Gaza Strip.
It said it would execute him if their demands were not met by 5:00 pm (1400 GMT) on Friday.
“We kidnapped the Italian prisoner Vittorio and we call on the Haniya government … to release all our prisoners,” it said, referring to Hamas Premier Ismail Haniya and naming an imprisoned jihadi leader called Sheikh Hisham al-Suedani.
“If you don’t respond quickly to our demands, within 30 hours from 11:00 am (0800 GMT) on April 14, we will execute this prisoner,” it said.