Iraqi captors kill Italian hostage

Iraqi gunmen killed an Italian hostage – and threatened in a videotape to execute three other kidnapped Italians unless US troops pull out of the country.

Earlier, a French journalist was freed after a four-day hostage ordeal that he said was marked by constant movement and threats to his life. Also, two more Japanese reportedly were abducted outside Baghdad.

Late yesterday, the Qatar-based TV network Al-Jazeera said it received a videotape of the four Italians, security guards who were abducted on Monday. The network aired footage of the men surrounded by their armed captors, but did not broadcast a portion of the tape that showed the execution.

Italian foreign minister Franco Frattini confirmed the killing last night, saying the Italian ambassador to Qatar watched the video and identified the executed hostage as hostage Fabrizio Quattrocchi.

The militants’ videotape was accompanied by a statement from a previously unknown group calling itself the Green Battalion, which threatened to “kill the three remaining Italian hostages one after the other, if their demands are not met”, Al-Jazeera said.

The group demanded the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq, an apology from Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi, and the release of religious clerics held in Iraq.

In Rome, Mr Berlusconi said: “They have cut short a life. They have not damaged our values and our commitment to peace.” He has said Italy would not withdraw its troops from Iraq.

Visibly shaken and exhausted, a French television journalist taken hostage in Iraq was released unharmed at a Baghdad mosque after four days in captivity.

Alexandre Jordanov, 40, who works for Capa Television in Paris, was kidnapped on Sunday while videotaping a US military convoy under attack.

Jordanov told France-2 television in an interview from the Iraqi capital that he was rammed with rifle butts, sometimes blindfolded and routinely threatened. He said his abductors switched his location eight times, passing him from one armed group to another.

“It was, ‘We’re going to cut your throat’ to ‘You’re part of the Mossad’,” Jordanov said, referring to the Israeli secret service.

Herve Chabalier, president of Capa, told LCI television that negotiations with Sunni religious authorities led to Jordanov’s release.

Jordanov had disappeared south of Baghdad while travelling with cameraman Ivan Ceriex, who was also kidnapped Sunday and released the next day.

Ceriex was picked up by a group of armed Sunni fighters and was released after he convinced his kidnappers he was French. France opposed the US-led invasion of Iraq last year and has no troops participating in the occupation.

France has strongly urged its citizens to leave Iraq, saying that they could be mistaken for nationals from countries participating in the US military coalition. There are fewer than 100 French citizens in Iraq, largely journalists, aid workers and the employees of private companies.

Japan, meanwhile, was investigating a news report that two Japanese freelance journalists were abducted in a Baghdad suburb. Three other Japanese were kidnapped last week.

The report by the Kyodo News agency said an unidentified Japanese organisation had received an e-mail saying the two were abducted.

Japan’s Foreign Ministry “strongly advised” Japanese journalists to leave Iraq, and repeated an advisory urging all its citizens in the country to evacuate. There are reportedly around 70 Japanese nationals in the country, mostly journalists and aid workers.

Also yesterday, the Russian Embassy in Baghdad was preparing a list of around 800 specialists to be evacuated. Russia’s Ministry of Emergency Situations was to send seven flights from Moscow to Baghdad and Kuwait starting today to evacuate the citizens from Russia and former Soviet republics, spokesman Viktor Beltsov said.

The move comes after three Russian and five Ukrainian employees of a Russian energy company were kidnapped by masked gunmen who broke into their Baghdad house on Monday. The Interenergoservis employees were released unharmed the next day.

US experts, meanwhile, conducted tests to determine whether four bodies discovered west of Baghdad are the remains of private US contractors missing since an assault on their convoy on Friday.

Two US soldiers and seven employees of US company, Halliburton, are missing - one, a 43-year-old truck driver, is known to have been abducted. His captors have threatened to kill and mutilate him unless US troops ended their assault on Fallujah.

The deadline passed on Sunday with no word on his fate. Halliburton would not give the nationalities of the six others.