Militants 'kill Italian journalist'

Militants in Iraq have murdered kidnapped Italian journalist Enzo Baldoni, who disappeared last week, Pan-Arab television station Al-Jazeera reported.

The station received a video showing Baldoni apparently being killed, but declined to show it out of sensitivity to its viewers, said Jihad Ballout, the station’s spokesman.

“To the best of our knowledge it indicates that the hostage takers carried out their threat,” Ballout said.

The Italian foreign ministry said it was checking the report.

The ministry had reported Baldoni missing last Friday and said he was believed to be in Najaf, the holy city south of Baghdad that has been the site of heavy fighting for nearly three weeks.

In a video broadcast on Al-Jazeera on Tuesday, a militant group calling itself “The Islamic Army in Iraq” said in a statement it could not guarantee Baldoni’s safety unless Italy announced within 48 hours that it would withdraw its 3,000 soldiers from Iraq, the network said.

Italy insisted it would keep its troops in Iraq, and Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi’s office said in a statement his government would work to win Baldoni’s freedom.

Baldoni, a part-time journalist whose main job was as an advertising copy writer, went to Iraq for the news magazine Diario. On a web log he kept while in Iraq, he described himself as a “war tourist”, although in other reported comments he insisted he was not simply out for cheap thrills.

In an interview broadcast on Al-Jazeera on Wednesday, Italian foreign minister Franco Frattini described Baldoni as a man of peace who was in Iraq “to tell the tale of the suffering of the Iraqi people”.

Frattini said Italy would withdraw its troops if requested to do so by the Iraqi government, but would not give in to demands by kidnappers to withdraw the forces.

“We will respect the free will of the Iraqi government. We will do what the Iraqi government asks us,” said Frattini, according to a transcript of the interview.

Yesterday, Al-Jazeera also broadcast an appeal from Baldoni’s two children, who said their father was a pacifist who wanted to show solidarity with those suffering in the conflict in Iraq.

Militants in Iraq have kidnapped more than 100 foreigners in an effort to force foreign countries to withdraw their forces from Iraq and to persuade foreign companies supporting the troops and working on reconstruction to leave.

Two French journalists are still missing in Iraq. Christian Chesnot of Radio France-Internationale and Georges Malbrunot of Le Figaro newspaper and RTL radio have not been in touch with their news organisations since Thursday.

Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi condemned the reported killing, but insisted Italian troops would remain in Iraq.

“There are no words to describe this inhuman act that with one blow wipes out centuries of civilisation to bring us back to the dark ages of barbarity,” the premier said in a statement.

“We will be faithful to the commitments taken with the Iraqi provisional government.”