The New York Times.
Italy Says Death Toll in Libya Is Likely Over 1,000
By RACHEL DONADIO
Published: February 23, 2011
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- ROME — Italy’s foreign minister, Franco Frattini, said Wednesday that estimates of more than 1,000 Libyan civilians killed in clashes with security forces and government supporters “appear to be true.”
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Mauro Scrobogna/PRESL, via Associated Press
- The Italian foreign minister Franco Frattini delivering his message on the situation in Libya in the Italian lower house of Parliament on Wednesday.
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- Figures for deaths in the Libyan unrest have been difficult to pin down. Human Rights Watch has confirmed roughly 300 deaths in the weeklong uprising, while noting that its estimate is conservative because of the difficulty in gathering information from morgues and hospitals when phone service is intermittent and the Internet is nearly blacked out.
- Mr. Frattini did not explain the basis for his conclusion, and his spokesman, Maurizio Massari, said only that the information came “from sources that we believe to be credible.”
- Italy, once Libya’s colonial ruler, has long and deep ties with that country, and Mr. Frattini’s comments carried significant weight. On Tuesday the Libyan ruler, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, called Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, his first known direct outreach to a European leader.
- Addressing the Italian Parliament on Wednesday morning after his comments to reporters about the death toll, Mr. Frattini said he was concerned about a rise in “Islamic radicalism” and “the rise of an Islamic emirate” in eastern Libya, including the Cyrenaica region, which he said was “no longer under the Libyan government’s control.” Cyrenaica was one of three states that were merged to form the Italian colony of Libya in the early 1930s.
- “This radical Islamism worries us because it is only a few hundred kilometers from the European Union,” Mr. Frattini said, adding that, “nothing can justify the violent killing of hundreds of innocent civilians.”
- Mr. Frattini’s remarks on Libya were the Italian government’s strongest to date. In recent days critics had called on Mr. Berlusconi to use his close ties with Colonel Qaddafi to pressure him to stop the violence in Libya.
- Libya supplies much of Italy’s natural gas. In 2008, under Mr. Berlusconi, the two countries signed an accord in which Italy pledged $5 billion over 20 years in exchange for Libya’s help in blocking the flow of illegal immigrants toward Europe and granting favorable treatment for Italian companies seeking to do business in Libya.