GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Gaza’s Hamas rulers launched a manhunt Friday for al-Qaeda- inspired Islamic militants thought to have killed an Italian activist, in a slaying that underscored the difficulties Hamas faces controlling even more radical factions in the blockaded strip.
Hamas police stormed an apartment in Gaza City where Vittorio Arrigoni, 36, was being held by members of a small extremist group that kidnapped him Thursday. They found his body, and the apartment was otherwise empty.
A statement by police said his body had “signs of strangulation and hanging around his neck,” as well as marks of handcuffs on his hands and marks of a beating on his face.
It was the first such kidnap- slaying of a foreigner in the Gaza Strip since the militant group Hamas took power in the tiny Mediterranean coastal territory in 2007. It highlighted the challenge that Iran-backed Hamas — a group with a militant Islamist ideology that is considered a terrorist organization by the U.S., the European Union and Israel — faces from smaller factions in Gaza that see it as too pragmatic.
Militants saying they represented a group called Monotheism and Holy War on Thursday released a video of Arrigoni, with cuts on his face and a fist gripping his hair. They demanded Hamas free their leader and two other members, threatening to kill the captive.
Despite the video, the group released a statement Friday denying it was responsible for Arrigoni’s death.
A pro-Palestinian activist, Arrigoni was a well-known figure in Gaza. According to a news release from his organization, the International Solidarity Movement, he had been “monitoring human-rights violations by Israel, supporting the Palestinian popular resistance against the Israeli occupation and disseminating information about the situation in Gaza to his home country of Italy.”
Hamas said two people were arrested in another location in connection with the killing, and a third was being sought.
