ROME — Italian leaders paid tribute to three soldiers killed in Iraq last week when their bodies arrived at an airport here Saturday.
President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi placed his hands on the coffins of the men, who were killed when a roadside bomb struck their convoy southwest of Nasiriya, where Italian forces in Iraq are based.
Ciampi was accompanied at Ciampino Airport by officials including outgoing Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and veteran communist leader Fausto Bertinotti, who was elected speaker of the Chamber of Deputies earlier in the day.
Bertinotti and the new speaker of the Senate, Franco Marini, also elected Saturday, paid tribute to the soldiers in their first official speeches.
