Newspapers echo Italy's shock

By David Willey
BBC Rome correspondent

Italy's three leading dailies, La Stampa in Turin, the Corriere della Sera in Milan and La Repubblica in Rome, carry the same banner headline - the massacre of the Italians.

Thursday's newspapers in Italy

They also have the same front page photograph of a distraught Italian soldier in front of the ruins of the destroyed carabinieri headquarters in Nasiriya.

The carabinieri general in Rome sums it all up in a single phrase: "It's our 9/11."

Italians are realising they are suddenly at war.

Corriere della Sera says Italians believed they were protected from terrorism by some sort of mysterious magic shield and that illusion has now been shattered.

"The cordiality towards the population has not been enough for our soldiers, nor have the smiles, the absence of arrogance, the light weapons... the medicines they have handed out, the kindness towards children and the friendliness towards some local tribal chiefs... Italy is living its tragedy: there have never been so many military casualties since the end of World War II," it said.

Sergio Romano, a distinguished former ambassador and now political commentator, says Italians may not know the faces of the Iraqi resistance but they know its strategy perfectly.

Last letter home

The Fedayeen, he says, want to create fear, anger and frustration among allied troops and provoke them into reprisals.

They also want to show that the Americans and their coalition partners are unable to protect either themselves or the Iraqis who collaborate with them.

Italy has gone to war almost without realising it, without understanding it, without being really sure it wanted to do so Italian daily La Stampa

"The dead and wounded in Nasiriya have our total solidarity, but our endless support goes also to the carabinieri and soldiers who will stay in or go to Iraq to continue a mission that is still incomplete and full of risks," said La Repubblica.

"Throwing in the towel at this point is unthinkable. Not only would it be shameful, but also disastrous."

What seems to shock the Italians is that they have suddenly realised that their soldiers' policy of winning hearts and minds - which worked so well in previous foreign humanitarian missions such as in Lebanon, for example - has not worked in Iraq.

In his last letter home, one young Italian carabiniere who died on Wednesday in Iraq, wrote about what he called "our spaghetti and football policy".

The Italians really believed that their soldiers were doing better than the Americans in winning over hearts and minds in Iraq.