Italian activist found dead in Gaza after abduction.

Italian activist found dead in Gaza after abduction.

Vittorio Arrigoni was kidnapped on Thursday morning

An Italian pro-Palestinian activist has been found dead in the Hamas-governed Gaza Strip hours after being abducted.

Vittorio Arrigoni, 36, was seized on Thursday by a radical group that has been in conflict with Hamas and is seeking the release of its leader.

Police said he was found hanged in a Gaza City house after receiving a tip-off. Two people have been arrested.

Italy denounced the "barbaric murder", calling it an "act of vile and senseless violence".

Mr Arrigoni was the first foreigner kidnapped in Gaza since BBC journalist Alan Johnston was abducted in 2007.

Friends of the activist gathered outside the hospital where his body had been taken on Friday morning.

"He came from across the world, left his country and family and his entire life and came here to break the siege, and we kill him? Why?" asked one of his friends.

Vittorio Arrigoni was seized by Salafist radicals, an Islamist movement itself that considers Hamas as too moderate, BBC Gaza correspondent Jon Donnison says.

The Salafists had threatened to execute Mr Arrigoni by 1400 GMT on Friday unless several prisoners, including their leader, Sheikh Abu Walid al-Maqdasi, were released. Sheikh Maqdasi was arrested by Hamas police last month in Gaza City.

In a video posted on YouTube, Mr Arrigoni appeared to have been beaten and his eyes were covered with thick black tape.

A caption on the video read: "The Italian hostage entered our land only to spread corruption." The video called Italy "the infidel state".

It is not clear why Mr Arrigoni was killed before the given deadline, but the Hamas interior ministry said he had died soon after being abducted.

Ministry spokesman Ehab al-Ghussein said he was killed "in an awful way".

Vittorio Arrigoni was a pro-Palestinian
activist who had been in Gaza for several years

Mr Ghussein told reporters that the security forces had been led to the house in Gaza City by one of the men involved.

He described the killing as a "heinous crime which has nothing to do with our values, our religion, our customs and traditions", and vowed to hunt down and bring to justice others who were involved.

In Rome, the Italian foreign ministry expressed "its deep horror over the barbaric murder".

Mr Arrigoni was a member of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) and had been in Gaza for several years.

Huwaida Arraf, a co-founder of the ISM, said he was very well-known in the territory and had a "dynamic, humanitarian personality".

"I even thought that whoever has him is going to see his humanity and just let him go, so when I heard what happened to him I was totally shocked," she told the AFP news agency.

Hamas had been credited with eliminating the threat of kidnapping in Gaza until his abduction. This is likely to be seen as a challenge to its authority, our correspondent says.