Italian hostage killed in Nigeria buried

The hometown of an Italian hostage killed by his captors along with his British colleague in a botched rescue attempt by British and Nigerian special forces ground to a halt on Monday for his funeral.

Some 2,000 people attended the service in Gattinara close to Turin in northern Italy amid an ongoing row between Britain and Italy, which has complained that it was not consulted ahead of time about the operation.Foreign Minister Giulio Terzi was among the participants at 48-year-old Franco Lamolinara’s funeral and President Giorgio Napolitano sent a message of condolences to the man’s widow saying: “The whole country is with you.”

Massimi D’Alema, a former prime minister from the centre-left Democratic Party who heads a parliamentary committee that monitors the activities of Italy’s secret services, said the British operation was “not reasonable.””There is a need for a further clarification,” he said.

In an attempt to defuse the row, however, Terzi wrote to the Corriere della Sera daily warning against the media frenzy surrounding such incidents.He said Britain had pledged “full collaboration in clearing up when and how the decision was taken to intervene militarily,” adding that British Foreign Secretary William Hague planned to visit Rome in the coming days.

Lamolinara and 28-year-old Chris McManus, both engineers working on a bank building in northwestern Nigeria, were shot dead at point-blank range by their captors as scores of special forces troops stormed their compound on Thursday.Italian officials voiced anger on Friday, complaining that it was only told by the British government when the operation was already under way.Napolitano said Britain’s behaviour in the affairs was “inexplicable”.Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan said the kidnappers belonged to the banned Islamist group Boko Haram, which has been responsible for many attacks in northern Nigeria in recent days.