Italy Bids Farewell to Iraq Victims

World | November 18, 2003, Tuesday // 00:00

In an emotional farewell that brought the nation to a standstill, Italy laid to rest the 19 Italian victims of the Nasiriyah bombing, the worst attack on Italian troops since World War II. On a day of national mourning marked by public sadness and pride, tens of thousands of Italians lined the streets of Rome to pay their last respects as the coffins wrapped in the national flag were borne through the city in a cortege of military trucks. Horse guards flanking the trucks clattered along the otherwise eerily silent cobblestoned Via dei Fori Imperiali as hundreds who lined the street leading to the ancient Colosseum clapped, wept or saluted, some shouting "grazie ragazzi" (thanks, boys). Rome came to a standstill as the funeral ceremony began after a six-kilometre (four-mile) journey to the basilica of Saint Paul's Outside-the-Walls from the Victor Emmanuel monument, where more than a quarter of a million people filed past the bodies as they laid in state on Monday.

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