3 Italian carabinieri killed in apparently deliberate farmhouse explosion

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MILAN (AP) — Three carabinieri militarized police officers were killed and another 13 carabinieri and police officers were injured in an explosion allegedly set by three middle-aged siblings who had been fighting eviction from a family farm near the northeastern Italian city of Verona early Tuesday, authorities said.

Two brothers and a sister, identified as Dino, Franco and Maria Luisa Rampini, were detained in connection to the explosion in the town of Castel d’Azzano, 10 kilometers (six miles) southwest Verona, police said.

They were being investigated for premeditated murder, chief prosecutor Raffaele Tito told reporters at the scene.

“While our carabinieri were carrying out a judicial order, they were hit by an intentional explosion of a gas tank,’’ Verona’s carabinieri commander, Col. Claudio Pagano, told Sky TG24. He called it “an absolutely crazy gesture.''

Tito said the eviction had been carefully planned. "The reaction was so violent, that it was hard to predict,'' the prosecutor said.

The two-story farmhouse had been filled with gas, and the explosion was set off when authorities opened the door in the predawn hours, regional governor Luca Zaia told Sky TG24.

It was the second time authorities moved to evict the siblings. Another attempt was thwarted last year when the Rampinis threatened to blow the house up, Zaia said.

Maria Luisa Rampini told Corriere della Sera last year that the siblings had been fighting what they perceived to be an unjust foreclosure of the family farm.

“They took away the agricultural company, the land and now the house, probably,'' Maria Luisa Rampini said on a video filmed during last year's attempt at evicting the siblings.

”Today they wanted to carry out the eviction. We are opposing it in every way. We have filled the house with gas to be able to fight,'' she said on the video posted Tuesday by the newspaper.

Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni and Defense Minister Guido Crosetto each expressed their condolences for the deaths of the carabinieri, part of a national militarized police force that plays a central law enforcement role in Italy.