Italian activist killed in Gaza
The body of a pro-Palestinian activist from Italy who was killed and left in an abandoned house in the Gaza Strip following his abduction by militants, was found this morning by security personnel, a Hamas official said on Friday.
Two men were arrested and others were being sought in the killing of Vittorio Arrigoni, the security official added.
A Jihadist Salafi group in Gaza aligned with al Qaeda had threatened yesterday to execute Arrigoni unless their leader, arrested by Hamas last month, was freed.
"A security force entered a house and they found the Italian man's body, he is dead," the official said.
The Italian Foreign Ministry said consular officials had confirmed the body was that of Arrigoni.
Saeb Erekat, an aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose Fatah faction was driven out of Gaza by the Islamist Hamas group in 2007, called Arrigoni's killing "a dark page in Palestinian history".
Arrigoni, 36, was pacifist and blogger who had lived in Gaza since August 2008. He arrived on a boat bringing humanitarian supplies which Israel had admitted despite imposing a blockade on the tiny coastal territory.
Italy described his killing as a "barbarous murder" and said it "condemned in the strongest terms the cowardly and irrational action by extremists indifferent to the value of human life".
