Roundup: Solidarity, fears prevail in Italy after Munich attack

A day after the attack in which nine people were killed in Munich, Germany, a strong sense of solidarity mingled with growing fears seemed to prevail in Italy.

The shooting that occurred at the shopping mall in the capital of the southern German Bavaria region hit the headlines in all news outlets here on Saturday, dominating official statements and media analyses.

The Italian government was immediately sympathetic towards the victims, the German citizens, and the authorities, condemning the attack and offering its condolence.

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi conveyed "Italy's thoughts and strong sorrow for the victims and the wounded people in Munich" to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, AGI news agency reported citing government sources.

Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni expressed Italy's "solidarity and friendship to Germany."

"Blood in Europe, again. We are close to the families of the victims," Gentiloni wrote on his official social media account on Friday night.

The Foreign Ministry said its Crisis Unit was activated soon after the attack in Munich began; up to Saturday, there were no information of possible Italian nationals involved.

Friday's shooting was perpetrated by an 18-year-old German-Iranian student, who killed nine people and injured at least 27, before killing himself.

There was no immediate evidence the killer, who acted alone, had any link with so-called Islamic State (IS) group, according to the German police.

Yet, this was the third attack against civilians occurring on European soil in eight days, Italian major analysts stressed.

Indeed, a Tunisian citizen deliberately drove a lorry into the crowd celebrating the Bastille Day on the promenade of Nice, in south France, killing 84 people on July 14.

On July 18, a 17-year-old Afghan asylum seeker injured five people with a knife and an axe on a train in Wurzburg, again in the Bavaria region, before being killed by police.

Italy was also rocked by a deadly attack occurred in Bangladesh's capital Dhaka on July 1, in which nine Italians died.

"Munich shooting is just the latest in a series of attacks leaving a long blood trail across the world, from Dhaka to Nice to Istanbul," Guido Olimpo, foreign affair analysts with Il Corriere della Sera daily wrote.

"Political reasons mingle with ideological motives. Yet, the bottom line is simple and brutal: the threats against our society are uncountable, and no aspect of our lives can be seen as safe."

Another leading newspaper, La Repubblica, devoted an analysis headlined "The war within us" to the incident.

"We have given in to a threat that is able to strike anyone and everywhere, from a stadium to a mall, from an airport to a metro station, a concert or a beach," author Gianluca Di Feo wrote.

International intelligence would prove to be unprepared for such threat so far, according to the analyst.

"The probe into Nice massacre unveiled that months have been spent preparing the plan (of the attack), without the French authorities knowing anything about it," Di Feo said.

Finally, Turin-based La Stampa said Germany has found itself in a tight corner and "between two fires" in latest months.

"On the one hand, (there was) the jihadist menace, which has brought about a series of more or less actual threats in the last one and a half year," correspondent from Brussels Marco Bresolin wrote.

"On the other, the growth of far-right and racially motivated extremism, with an increasing hatred towards foreigners fuelled by the refugee crisis that had exploded in the 2015 summer."

"This has been the mood in Germany," the correspondent added, recalling that German authorities registered a 77 percent increase in racially motivated and anti-Semitic crimes in 2015 only. Endit