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Aug 5,2007-Aug 12,2007 |
Italy to salute more slain soldiers
State funerals for victims of attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan
Originally Published: 2006-05-14
Two Italian soldiers were killed in Afghanistan on May 5 by a bomb that exploded as their patrol vehicle travelled along a road southeast of Kabul.
The two servicemen, identified as Lieutenant Manuel Fiorito and Staff Sergeant Luca Polsinelli, died of their wounds after being airlifted to a nearby military hospital. Four other soldiers were slightly injured by the blast.
It was not immediately clear whether the bomb was a mine or a home-made bomb detonated by remote control when the two Italian Puma armoured cars passed by.
The attack came less than a month after a suicide bomber blew himself up outside the base used by Italy's provisional reconstruction team in the northwestern city of Herat. That attack caused three Afghan deaths.
The bodies of Fiorito, 27, and Polsinelli, 29, were flown back to Italy last Sunday. On Monday afternoon their two coffins were placed in ceremonial rooms at Rome's Celio military hospital so that friends, family and the public could pay their respects.
State funerals for the two soldiers of the Alpini mountain regiment were held on Tuesday in Rome.
The funerals came exactly a week after those of three Carabinieri policemen who were killed by another roadside bomb in Nassiriya, Iraq, on April 27.
That attack also seriously injured a fourth Carabiniere, Enrico Frassanito, who died last Sunday after ten days in hospital. Frassanito, who suffered burns over half of his body, had appeared to be improving and so he was flown from Iraq to Verona, his home town in northern Italy. But during the journey his condition took a sudden downturn and he died in Verona hospital about an hour after arriving.
A state funeral for the Carabiniere was also held on Tuesday in Verona.
Intelligence sources said that the attacks in Afghanistan and in Nassiriya cannot be considered a coincidence given the recent elections in Italy.
They amount to "pressure on the new centre-left government to withdraw (Italian) military contingents," the sources said.
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