ITALY: Italian police have said they arrested two suspected members of a left-wing guerrilla group after a shoot-out on a train early yesterday, which left a policeman dead and his assailant and another officer wounded.
Police identified the suspects as Mr Mario Galesi (37) and Ms Desdemona Lioce (43), and said they belonged to the Red Brigades-Combatant Communist Party (BR-PCC), an offshoot of the Marxist guerrilla group that terrorised Italy in the 1970s and 1980s.
The shooting happened during a routine document check by railway police aboard the Rome-Florence train at around 8.30 a.m. yesterday.
Police said a man in a train compartment, who was travelling with a woman, had pulled out a pistol and opened fire while they were being questioned. A superintendent died after he was shot in the neck and another officer was wounded in the chest, they said.
Italy's President Mr Carlo Azeglio Ciampi sent his condolences to the family of the dead officer.
Mr Galesi was shot in the neck by another officer and was undergoing surgery in the nearby town of Arezzo, police said. Ms Lioce was being questioned in the local police headquarters.
Police said the document check aboard the train had been routine. Mr Galesi and Ms Lioce were on the police wanted list for membership of the group that claimed responsibility for the murder of government adviser Marco Biagi last March and Massimo D'Antona, another adviser, in 1999.
Mr Biagi's murder in Bologna raised fears in Italy of a return of "the years of lead", the series of left-wing bombings and assassinations which battered the country in the 1970s and 1980s.
"This tragic episode shows that our country can not let its guard down in the battle against terrorism, a resurgent threat which is continually fed by old and new bloody ideologies," said Mr Sandro Bondi, spokesman for Prime Minister Mr Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia party.
Both suspects were named by Interior Minister Mr Giuseppe Pisanu during a parliamentary debate in January as belonging to the BR-PCC.
The two were among several suspects wanted for questioning in connection with the murder of Mr D'Antona. Mr Galesi was previously arrested in 1986 on suspicion of belonging to an armed group, but released for lack of evidence.
The BR-PCC is smaller than the group that terrorised Italy two decades ago but it is seeking to reach the same level of militancy, experts say. - (AFP)