Terrorist Killed in Attack on Adviser to Craxi

Terrorists ambushed and wounded the chief of Prime Minister Bettino Craxi’s economic think tank Friday, but his bodyguard killed one of his attackers, a 28-year-old woman.

Craxi’s budget and economic adviser, Antonio Da Empoli, 47, was shot twice in one leg and once in a hand as he stepped from his chauffeured car, stopped at a newsstand near his home where he normally buys his daily newspapers.

The car’s driver, a 25-year-old policeman whose identity was withheld for security reasons, returned fire, killing one terrorist as three others, two men and a woman, fled on two motor scooters. The dead attacker was wearing a bulletproof vest, according to police, but was fatally hit in the throat.

Police identified her as Vilma Monaco, the wife of Gianni Pelosi, 28, a Red Brigades terrorist already in custody. She carried a typewritten leaflet in the name of the “Fighting Communist Coalition”, which police believe to be a splinter group from the Red Brigades that was formed in Paris in 1984.

Anonymous telephone calls to two Italian newspaper offices claimed responsibility in the name of the same group and said Da Empoli was targeted because of his “anti-worker” contributions to Italy’s 1986 budget.

Craxi and other government officials including Interior Minister Oscar Luigi Scalfaro visited Da Empoli in hospital where doctors said his wounds were not life threatening.

‘Terrible Moments’

“I am fine,” Da Empoli was quoted as saying. “They were terrible moments, but I think I am getting better.”

He saved himself by dropping to the ground and rolling under his car when the shooting started, according to witnesses. The chauffeur leaped from the limousine and opened fire at the attackers.

“Perhaps the terrorists didn’t know that his driver was a trained, armed policemen as are all drivers of the prime minister’s office,” said Craxi’s press spokesman, Antonio Ghirelli.

Ghirelli said police had found a leaflet from the same group last year warning that they were organizing and would soon be “attacking minor targets which are close to the main objectives.”

Scalfaro, who only Thursday had warned in a special report of an expected upswing in home grown Italian terrorism, said the attack on Da Empoli “painfully confirms the validity of those evaluations.”

He noted the similarity of Friday’s attack to the assassination in March, 1985, of economist Ezio Tarantelli in Rome. Tarantelli had played a major role in framing legislation to reduce Italy’s costly scala mobile, the automatic escalator guaranteeing wage rises that exceeded inflation rates.

Just 11 days ago, the former Republican mayor of Florence, Lando Conti, was gunned down in his car. The Red Brigades claimed responsibility for that attack.

The Red Brigades terrorized Italy during the 1970s and early 1980s.