Italy Sends 50 Troops for Duty in Iraq
As Italy mourned Thursday, the government sent fresh troops to Iraq, a day after at least 18 Italians were killed in a suicide bombing in Nasiriyah.
Fifty Carabinieri paratroopers left central Italy to reinforce a contingent depleted and demoralized by Wednesday’s blast. Deputy Prime Minister Gianfranco Fini called the attack “our Sept. 11.”
Defense Minister Antonio Martino visited the blast site and blamed the bombing on the “same people” who had carried out the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
In Italy, flowers were placed on war memorials and newspapers started fund drives for children orphaned by the bombing. Students said morning prayers in chapels, and homemakers on their way to shop left flowers on the pavement outside police stations from the Alps to Sicily.
Pope John Paul II and cardinals prayed for “the victims of the cruel attack,” and even sports papers ran the news of the deaths on their front pages.
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