Attack a matter of when, not if, for Italians

Berlusconi said Italy is in the firing line, and Romans themselves have felt it ever since he deployed 3,000 troops in Iraq as part of the US coalition, despite massive street protests.

"The level of alert has been raised in Italy as in all European countries," said Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu, ahead of an emergency meeting of army, police and intelligence chiefs on the country's National Security Council on Friday.

But fatalism prevailed on the cobblestoned streets of the eternal city.

"The thing is, it's not a matter of if, but when and where, there will be an attack on Italy," similar to the London and Madrid bombings, according to Nicolo, a Milanese lawyer on a business trip to Rome.

He said next year's general election in Italy will be a "period of risk, because they (terrorists) never attack by chance, as we've seen in Madrid and London."

The fall-out from the Madrid bombings on March 11, 2004 toppled the conservative government of Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, who like Berlusconi was a close ally of the US in Iraq.

Though Aznar's government blamed Basque separatists, voters -- many saying they felt the premier tried to dupe them about the suspected attackers to avoid an electoral backlash for taking Spain into the Iraq war -- elected Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, an outspoken opponent of the war who withdrew the troops.

A group calling itself the Organisation of al-Qaeda Jihad in Europe, which claimed responsibility for the London bombings, immediately threatened similar attacks in Denmark and Italy and other countries with troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Flags flew at half-mast on public buildings across the Italian capital, including the presidential Quirinale palace and the city hall, as a mark of respect for the victims of the London bombings.