Italians Mourn, Ask Why, as Dead Return from Iraq

Thu November 13, 2003 07:51 AM ET

By Philip Pullella

ROME (Reuters) - Italy slipped into mourning on Thursday as flags flew at half-mast after 18 Italians were killed by suicide bombers at a military police base in Iraq in what one political leader called "our September 11."

Flowers were placed on forgotten war memorials and children asked why their fathers would not come home. Polemics took a back seat to grieving -- for the time being -- as most politicians held fire and prepared to bury the nation's dead.

A cabinet meeting confirmed that Rome would keep troops in Iraq and decided that the day of the funerals would be a day of national mourning. The bodies are due back in Italy in the coming days.

Some opposition members have demanded Italy's 2,300 troops be withdrawn. But center-right Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, a staunch ally of President Bush, has said Rome would stand firm and not be intimidated by the attack.

Deputy Prime Minister Gianfranco Fini called it "our September 11." Defense Minister Antonio Martino visited the blast site in Nassiriya and blamed it on the "same people" who had carried out the 2001 attacks on the United States.

As schoolchildren said morning prayers in chapels and housewives on their way to shop dropped flowers on pavements outside police stations from the Alps to Sicily, there was a feeling that the country was now somehow different.

"Italy pierced in its heart," was the headline in Rome's Il Messaggero that seemed to sum up the national mood a day after the blast that killed 16 Italian troops and two Italian civilians as well as nine Iraqis.

It was Italy's highest military death toll in one incident since World War II.

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