Italy migrant shooting spree ‘triggered by woman’s murder’

MACERATA: A far-right supporter suspected of wounding six Africans in a shooting spree in central Italy said the “trigger” for his attacks was the murder of an Italian woman, allegedly by a Nigerian asylum seeker, according to media reports on Sunday.

Luca Traini was arrested and taken into custody after drive-by attacks in the town of Macerata wounded five men and one woman from Ghana, Mali and Nigeria on Saturday.

It came a day after a Nigerian asylum-seeker and drug dealer was arrested in the same town for the murder of an 18-year-old woman, whose dismembered body was discovered in suitcases.

“I was driving to the gym when I heard on the radio about the 18-year-old girl,” daily newspaper Corriere della Sera quoted him as telling investigators.

“Instinctively I turned around, I went home, I opened the safe and took the pistol and decided to kill them all.”

After the shootings, Traini, 28, allegedly got out of his car, made a fascist salute with a tricolour Italian flag draped over his shoulders and shouted “Viva Italia”, or “Long Live Italy”, and “Italy for Italians”, media reports said.

Police who raided his mother’s home found far-right literature, including a copy of Adolf Hitler’s manifesto “Mein Kampf ” and a book by fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.

Interior Minister Marco Minniti said the attack was part of a culture “of right-wing extremism with clear reference to fascism and Nazism” and deplored that the sole link between the victims was “the colour of their skin”.

He said the “criminal act” was prompted by “racial hatred” and had been prepared in advance.

The man allegedly opened fire in eight areas in the town and also targeted the office of the centre-left Democratic Party in a two-hour terror spree in the sleepy town of 43,000 people, press reports said.