Two men on a motorcycle gunned down a senior adviser to the Italian government on Tuesday in what Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi denounced as an act of political "terrorism".
Economist Marco Biagi, who helped Berlusconi's centre-right government draft controversial new labour reforms, was shot dead as he arrived home by bicycle in the northern Italian city of Bologna. The killing revived fears of a resurgence of the politically motivated violence Italy suffered in the 1970s and 1980s.
"Once again...terrorism surfaces and represents a real danger that has to be confronted with all necessary force," Berlusconi said in a statement.
"The murder of Marco Biagi, a highly valued economist who was helping the government define its labour policy, grieves all Italians," he added.
Although no one claimed immediate responsibility for the killing, anti-terrorist experts were sent in and Interior Minister Claudio Scajola cut short a trip to the United States.
Bologna's prosecutor general indicated he believed the murder was tied to contested government plans to overhaul labour laws, which are aimed at making it easier to hire and fire certain categories of workers.
"With all the confusion and controversy that's going on (over labour reform) and then something as awful as this happens...work it out for yourselves," prosecutor Luigi Persico told reporters.
His murder came a month after a small bomb exploded outside the Interior Ministry in Rome and followed a warning by the justice ministry that political extremism was on the rise.
General strike
Biagi, an adviser to the Labour Ministry, was one of the co-authors of landmark labour reforms approved by the cabinet last week in the face of vehement opposition from trades unions who have said they will call a general strike over the issue.
Sergio Cofferati, the leader of Italy's largest union, denounced Biagi's killing and held emergency talks with other labour leaders to discuss the crisis.
"The murder of professor Marco Biagi is the latest act of barbarism committed by a terrorism which has not been overcome and that aims to change the rules and dynamics of democracy and social dialogue," Cofferati told state television.
The killing echoed the 1999 murder of another senior Labour Ministry aide, Massimo D'Antona, who worked for the then centre-left government.
A group calling itself the Red Brigades, a guerrilla movement thought to have been eliminated more than a decade ago, later claimed responsibility for the shooting.
Last year, police arrested eight suspected far-left activists in connection with D'Antona's assassination.
"The drama which the country lived through with the murder of professor D'Antona is being repeated," Cofferati said.
Biagi, who had also worked for a series of centre-left governments, was shot in front of the home he shared with his wife and son. He died as he was being taken to hospital.
"We're not faced by an act of blind violence, but a lucid violence which aims to weaken democracy," said Piero Fassino, leader of the largest leftist opposition party.
(China Daily March 20, 2002)
