A radical Islamic group posted an online video that reportedly shows the corpses of foreign hostages abducted from northern Nigeria.

The images in a video released on YouTube shows some of the corpses of seven hostages kidnapped and later killed by the Islamic extremist group Ansaru. The images match with the still images of hostages released by the group when they claimed the killings, the Associated Press reported.

Apparently, the face of one of the corpses resembled that of a hostage identified by the authorities earlier. The hostages - one each from Italy, Britain and Greece and four from Lebanon were working for a Lebanese firm Setraco.

The video shows a gunman standing with a riffle near dead bodies, and pans to show three corpses with one bearing a gunshot wound on the head.

The video also shows a series of close-ups of their faces lit up by a torch, according to a Reuters report.

The muted video appears with an Arabic caption implying, "the killing of seven Christian hostages in Nigeria."

A second caption in Arabic and English stated: "In the name of Allah Most Beneficent Most Merciful," Reuters reported.

Ansaru, in a press statement Saturday, had claimed that it had killed the seven foreigners taken hostage from a Lebanese construction site in northern state of Bauchi in mid-February.

"British and Nigerian security forces killed some Muslims in their attempt to rescue the Christian hostages, therefore we killed the Christians," Ansaru said in the statement.

The western governments confirmed the death of the hostages, but denied carrying out any rescue operations.

The statement by the al-Qaeda linked group, Ansaru, had indicated that it decided to kill the hostages after it saw news reports of the arrival of British military aircraft to Bauchi, which it believed had come for rescuing the hostages.

However, the British Defense ministry had clarified Sunday that its planes had flown to international airport in Abuja, the nation's central capital located 180 miles southwest, in a mission to ferry Nigerian troops and equipments to Mali. Greek authorities also denied carrying out rescue operations to release the hostages.

Ansaru, a splinter group of Boko Haram - an extremist Nigerian Islamic group said the attack was motivated by France’s military intervention in Mali.

The Nigerian authorities have not confirmed the killings yet.

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