Hostages taken in Nigeria reported killed

Seven foreign hostages kidnapped last month by a Nigerian Islamist group from a construction company compound have been killed, according to the Italian and Greek foreign ministries.

The al-Qaida-affiliated group Ansaru announced on Saturday it had killed the hostages seized on Feb 7 in the northern state of Bauchi because of attempts by Nigerian and British forces to free them.

The Nigerian Islamist group has posted a video of their bodies on the Internet.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said it was "very likely" they were dead, calling it "an act of cold blooded murder". Nigerian authorities have so far not commented.

The national police spokesman and a spokesman for police forces in Bauchi state both said on Monday they could not yet confirm or deny the killings.

The silent video published by Ansaru, and dated Saturday, shows a gunman standing next to a pile of bodies.

It carries the Arabic title "The killing of the seven Christian hostages in Nigeria" although the religion of the captives was not clear.

Foreign governments had not been able to confirm the killings until Sunday. Italy and Greece denied that any attempt to rescue the hostages had been made by any of the governments involved.

"Our checks, conducted in coordination with the other countries concerned, lead us to believe that the news of the killing of the hostages seized last month is true," an Italian Foreign Ministry statement said.

"There was never any military attempt to rescue the hostages by any of the governments concerned," it said, adding that the president had sent his condolences to the Italian's family.

Atrocious act

The seven workers comprised four Lebanese citizens and one each from Britain, Greece and Italy.

The Italian victim, Silvano Trevisan, was a 69-year-old engineer from the northwestern Lombardy region and had been working abroad for a number of years. "It was an atrocious act of terrorism, against which the Italian government expresses its firmest condemnation, and which is the only explanation for the barbarous and blind violence," the statement said.

Italian caretaker Prime Minister Mario Monti pledged that the government will make every effort to stop the killers.

Ansaru previously issued a statement saying its fighters kidnapped the group from a construction company's camp in the north of Bauchi, the capital of Bauchi state. Gunmen had burned police trucks and blown up a fence at the company's compound, killing a guard.

Last year, another Italian engineer, 47-year-old Franco Lamolinara, was killed by kidnappers along with a British colleague during a joint British-Nigerian operation aimed at freeing them in the northwestern city of Sokoto.

Reuters-Xinhua