ITALY WILL today pay tribute to the six Italian soldiers who were killed in a suicide car bomb attack in Kabul last Thursday.
Even though the nature of Italy’s role in Afghanistan has come under increasing scrutiny in the wake of Thursday’s attack, with various political forces calling for an immediate pull-out, this morning’s state funeral in the basilica of St Paul Without The Walls is likely to prompt a solemn expression of nationwide grief.
President Giorgio Napolitano was at Rome’s Ciampino airport yesterday morning for the return of the bodies of the six soldiers. Draped in the red, green and white Italian flag and carried by paratroopers from the Folgore regiment to which all six belonged, the coffins stopped in front of President Napolitano as a military bugler sounded The Last Post.
As the president paused, putting a hand on all six coffins, eyes focused on two-year-old Simone Valente, son of Sgt Maj Roberto Valente, one of the dead. Wearing the paratroopers’ red beret and held in his mother’s arms, little Simone offered a poignant symbol of the sense of loss.
In his weekly Angelus address from his summer residence of Castelgandolfo, Pope Benedict XVI paid tribute to the military and civilian dead in Afghanistan. “The news of the very serious attack in Afghanistan on Italian military in recent days causes me much pain. With my prayers, I share the suffering of relatives and also of the military and civil communities. At the same time, my thoughts are equally drawn to the other international forces which recently have also suffered losses and which are there to work for peace and the development of all those institutions necessary for human co-existence.”
Reports from Kabul yesterday put the death toll from Thursday’s blast, which took place in a mostly residential area near the Supreme Court, at 26. Ten Afghan civilians were killed on Thursday whilst another 10 have subsequently died from injuries, with a further 55 civilians seriously wounded.
Italian and Afghan authorities are carrying out separate investigations into the blast. At the centre of those enquiries will be the minute-long shoot-out which followed, when those Italian soldiers who survived the attack began shooting. According to Italian military sources, they fired into the air to ward off “scavengers” but Afghan sources have accused the soldiers of firing indiscriminately at civilians, causing further deaths.
Italy has just under 3,330 troops in Afghanistan, making it the fourth-largest contingent in the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force mission. The deaths bring the death toll for Italian troops killed in Afghanistan since 2001 to 20, whilst the car bomb attack represents Italy’s biggest military loss of life since 19 men were killed in Nasirya, Iraq in 2003.