On Sunday, Arab television channel Al Jazeera reported referring to an Internet statement made by al-Qaeda in Iraq that terrorists had executed the four employees of the Russian Embassy in revenge for what they claimed was "the torture, killing and expulsion of our brothers and sisters by the infidel Russian government" in Chechnya.
"The Foreign Ministry currently does not have information that would confirm the death of the Russians in Iraq," Andrei Denisov said.
Russian diplomat Vitaly Titov was killed during the attack on an embassy car in the capital of Iraq. The kidnappers seized Fyodor Zaitsev, third secretary of the embassy, and also diplomats Rinat Agliulin, Anatoly Smirnov and Oleg Fedoseyev.
Mikhail Kamynin, the official spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, said last week that the Mujahideen Shura Council, a group linked to the al-Qaeda cell in Iraq that had claimed responsibility for the abduction, had sentenced the diplomats to death.
The Foreign Ministry made several appeals for the immediate release of four diplomats, saying that they were "representatives of the Russian people, who have never waged a war against Islam anywhere."
The speaker of the Russian parliament's upper chamber earlier said talks to free the diplomats had produced some progress.
