ROME (AFP) - Italy said it had no information which could confirm the execution of two Italian hostages held in Iraq, sources close to Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi cited by ANSA news agency said.
The same sources said the information that the two women aid workers had been killed, which was posted on an Islamist website, should be treated with the utmost caution.
The claim Thursday by the "Jihad Organization" that the two women, Simona Pari and Simona Torretta had been "slaughtered" could not be immediately verified.
Both of them were abducted two weeks ago in Baghdad, along with two Iraqi colleagues, and an Islamist group subsequently demanded that Italy withdraw its 3,000 troops stationed in Iraq.
Early Thursday, a statement on an Islamist website said that "We in the Jihad Organization in Iraq announce that the ruling of God Almighty has been implemented on the two Italian prisoners by slaughter."
Referring to Pari and Torretta without naming them, it said they were executed "after the Italian government, led by the despicable Berlusconi, did not heed our sole condition (for releasing them), which was to pull out of Iraq."
The reported execution of the two 29-year-old women comes after the beheading of two US hostages in Iraq, Jack Hensley and Eugene Armstrong, held by the Al-Qaeda linked group Tawhid wal Jihad (UNity and Holy War) and led by Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi.
That same group is also holding a British hostage, Kenneth Bigley, who on Wednesday issued an emotional plea for mercy via a video posted on an Islamist website.