European press review

Thursday's main European dailies are dominated by yesterday's attack in the Iraqi town of Nasiriya, which resulted in the Italian armed forces' largest loss of life since World War II.

French papers report on the trial of 37 people accused of embezzling money from former state oil giant Elf, while a nationwide rail strike preoccupies the Austrian press.

Dying for peace

The devastating suicide bomb attack in the southern Iraqi town of Nasiriya makes the front pages in the mainstream Italian press.

"Italy mourns 18 dead in Iraq," says the headline in Corriere della Sera, and La Repubblica sees a "country in mourning".

Il Giorno reports "Italians massacred in Nasiriya", while L'Unita speaks of "the most serious attack since World War II" on Italian armed forces, which it says were "mired in an Iraqi inferno".

Many papers carry dramatic pictures of the devastated police station building, with columns of smoke rising from the debris.

The most serious attack since World War II Il Giorno

Turin's La Stampa reports President Ciampi's condolences to the families of the dead soldiers and his pledge that Italy would continue its mission, despite what he called this "despicable act of terrorism".

The attack also makes the front pages across the press in the rest of Europe, where many countries have troops serving on peacekeeping missions abroad.

In Switzerland, Le Temps speaks of an Italy "overwhelmed by sadness" as the details and the identities of the victims gradually became known.

Germany's Der Tagesspiegel hopes Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi will resist pressure to pull the Italian troops out.

The paper points out that the Italian Carabinieri and soldiers who died in the attack did not go to Iraq as conquerors but in order to restore peace and stability.

It is surprised that Mr Berlusconi is standing by his policy although, as the paper puts it, "he is usually guided by the latest opinion polls".

"We hope he will hold out," it concludes.

Austria's Die Presse too predicts that the shock caused in Italy may soon turn into anger against the prime minister.

Mr Berlusconi, it says, "is politically responsible for the unpopular deployment in Iraq and thus for the soldiers' deaths, and voters will make him feel it".

In Germany, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung says the suicide bombing opens "a new level of escalation" in the guerrilla war.

In Iraq, nobody is safe La Razon

"The attackers," it believes, "will have considered the effects on public opinion in Italy, which was not in favour of the war and which will now ask whether this sacrifice is justified."

In Spain, a staunch ally of the US with its own forces on the ground, La Vanguardia runs with the headline "Italy receives the deadliest blow in Iraq", saying the situation in Iraq is going "from bad to worse".

"Italians slaughtered in Iraq" is the headline in ABC.

El Pais says "the stark reality shows that the US and Great Britain underestimated the occupation" of the country.

In the paper's opinion, the intervention in Iraq "has been progressively stripped of its soundest justifications".

"Not only is it consuming more energy and exhausting those involved", the paper charges, but it also "emboldens the mercenaries of terror" and "inflames radical passions in the Islamic world".

The bombing, says La Razon, "marks a new phase in the wave of terrorist attacks and is further proof that, after the targeting of the UN and the Red Cross, nobody can consider themselves safe, especially during the month of Ramadan".

"In Iraq," the paper warns, "nobody is safe".

Paris corruption trial

In France, Le Figaro leads on the outcome of the trial that exposed a massive system of government-sponsored corruption at the former state oil company Elf, after a Paris court on Wednesday jailed three top executives for up to five years and handed down lighter sentences to several other defendants.

The Paris-based International Herald Tribune says the trial "served to remind the French of a series of corruption investigations that rocked France in the 1990s involving executives of state-owned banks and corporations, and their patrons in the halls of power".

What was revealed at the end of the trial, Le Monde says, adds up to what it calls "a fascinating slice" of France at the end of the 20th century, of "the oil business and its dark corners", "state secrets and reasons of state".

A commentary in Germany's Sueddeutsche Zeitung describes the convicted executives as "the operators of the former graft apparatus of the French republic" in what it calls a "victory for the judicial system".

German corruption affairs, the paper notes, seem "strangely provincial" by comparison.

Austria off the rails

Vienna's Der Standard says the all-out strike of state rail company employees which started yesterday is unusual by Austrian standards and therefore risky for the country's trade union federation.

The paper warns that, in view of the deadlock in negotiations about the government's reform plans, a relatively long strike seems likely.

"The railways are in their worst crisis in more than 100 years," Die Presse says, while tabloid Neue Kronen Zeitung says its readers have run out of sympathy for the strikers.

"Austrians," it says "are now just shaking their heads."

The European press review is compiled by BBC Monitoring from internet editions of the main European newspapers and some early printed editions.