"Islamic Jihad Organization" Says It Killed Simona Pari and Simona Torretta

by Philip Pullella

Italy’s government tried to reassure an anguished nation Thursday that two women
hostages in Iraq were most likely still alive, saying an Islamist group’s claim
to have killed them was "unreliable."

The government moved swiftly after a group calling itself the Jihad Organization
said in a statement it had killed the women because Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi
had not bowed to demands to withdraw Italian troops from Iraq.

The speaker of the lower house of parliament, Pierferdinando Casini, told lawmakers
the government believed the claims were "unreliable" and was treating them with "total suspicion."

Separately, a government statement urged caution, saying there was "nothing to corroborate" the claims and adding that it could be an attempt to "use the media for terrorism."

Simona Pari and Simona Torretta, both aged 29, were kidnapped in Baghdad on Sept. 7 along with two Iraqi colleagues.

A militant group calling itself the Islamic Jihad Organization said on Sept. 12 that it would kill the hostages in 24 hours if Italian troops did not leave Iraq. Early Thursday the so-called Jihad Organization said the women were dead.

"We in the Jihad Organization in Iraq announce that God’s verdict has been passed on the two Italian prisoners by slaughtering, after the Italian government headed by the vile Berlusconi did not listen to our one condition to withdraw from Iraq," it said.

A group calling itself Ansar al-Zawahri or Supporters of Zawahri, later said in a statement posted on a Web site rarely used by Islamists, it had beheaded the Italian women and would soon post a video of the killing.

"The two Italian spies have been decapitated with a knife and without any sympathy or mercy," the lengthy statement said. Ayman al-Zawahri is number two in al Qaeda.

Statements by militants groups claiming to have kidnapped or killed hostages are difficult to authenticate. Most of the sites contain bulletin boards open to anyone to post entries.

ANGUISH

Italian newspapers were filled with reports of what one called "a night of anguish" for the families of the two, who worked on charity projects helping Iraqi children in Baghdad and were the first Western women to be kidnapped in Iraq.

"If they have killed them, they have killed the good of the world," Torretta’s mother told La Repubblica daily.

"I hope it is not true, it can’t be true," she was quoted as saying by Corriere della Sera newspaper.

"These reports have killed us. We don’t want to believe them. We are hanging by a thread of hope."

Two Italian men were kidnapped and killed in Iraq earlier this year, but the abduction of the "two Simonas," as they have become known, stirred especial emotion in Italy.

"They went there to help people, innocent girls who had nothing to do with it all," said Valeria Marotta, on her way to work in Rome Thursday. "The whole story makes me feel sick."

The aid organization which employed the two women, Bridge to Baghdad, said they were hoping and praying the militant claim was not true. "Until we have certainty, we will not have peace," the groups said on its Web site.

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=6315123