An Italian hostage was executed by his Iraqi abductors, Foreign Minister Franco Frattini confirmed Wednesday night, saying an Italian official had seen a videotape of the killing.
Earlier, the Arabic TV network Al-Jazeera reported the killing, saying it had received a video recording of the murder. The Italian ambassador to Qatar, where the network is based, watched the video and confirmed that the man killed was Fabrizio Quattrocchi, one of the kidnapped Italians, Frattini said.
"He saw the film," Frattini said, during a live TV talk show.
Four Italian security guards were abducted Monday. The militants' videotape was accompanied by a statement from a previously unknown group calling itself the Green Battalion, which threatened to "kill the three remaining Italian hostages one after the other, if their demands are not met," Al-Jazeera said.
The group demanded the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, an apology from Berlusconi, and the release of religious clerics held in Iraq.
"We know our duty is to do what is possible and impossible to get them out," the minister said. "We are all only close to the young men who are there, and to the family of the young man who was killed."
In other developments:
U.S. warplanes strafed gunmen in Fallujah on Wednesday, and more than 100 guerrillas with rocket-propelled grenades pounded a lone U.S. armored vehicle lost in the streets — a sign of heavy battles to come if U.S. Marines resume a full assault on this besieged city. In the south, the country's top cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, persuaded radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to drop defiant negotiating demands — including that U.S. troops withdraw from all Iraqi cities. An Iranian envoy was also getting involved in the mediation with al-Sadr, an aide to the cleric said. The U.N. envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, said respected Iraqis should lead a caretaker government — with a prime minister, president and two vice presidents to run the country after the handover of power by the Americans on June 30 and until national elections in January. He did not say who would select them.The Pentagon plans to extend the combat tours in Iraq of more than 10,000 soldiers from a Germany-based armored and a cavalry regiment from Louisiana, defense officials said Wednesday. The move, which has not been officially announced, breaks a pledge given to all soldiers when they deployed to Iraq last year. They were told they would be kept there no longer than 12 months. A Danish military intelligence analyst fired for leaking confidential reports said Wednesday that Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen lied to lawmakers in 2002 when he sought their support for a U.S.-led coalition to oust Iraq's Saddam Hussein. Soeholm Grevil claimed that Fogh Rasmussen had been given several separate reports that showed no proof existed of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.The State Department confirmed that four bodies have been found in Iraq. CBS News has confirmed that the bodies are those of three American civilians and one soldier.