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MILAN: 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.

KYIV: Russian forces struck a UN aid convoy in the partially occupied southern Kherson region of Ukraine on Tuesday, Kyiv and the UN said, adding there were no casualties in the attack.
The United Nations said its convoy of four vehicles was clearly marked and came under attack from Russian drones and artillery while delivering aid to the frontline town of Bilozerka.
“Such attacks are utterly unacceptable. Aid workers are protected by international humanitarian law and should never be attacked,” said the UN’s Humanitarian Coordinator for Ukraine Matthias Schmale.
He added that two World Food Programme trucks were damaged in the strike, while local authorities said the remaining two were unscathed.

The UN’s sexual and reproductive health agency, UNFPA, told AFP the convoy was carrying 800 individual packages “containing essential items for older persons, women and girls.”
“The area has a very high proportion of older people, many of whom are unable to relocate due to drones and shelling and rely on humanitarian assistance for survival,” Jacqueline Mahon, UNFPA Representative to Ukraine, told AFP.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga called the strike “another brutal violation of international law, proving Russia’s utter disregard for civilian lives and its international obligations““
There was no immediate reaction from Moscow.
A senior official in the Kherson region, Oleksandr Prokudin, published a photo showing a white truck marked with the World Food Programme emblem on fire with plumes of black smoke rising above it.
Ukrainian authorities and aid groups have said throughout the nearly four-year Russian invasion that their staff and facilities have come under bombardments from Moscow’s forces.
The Kherson region, which Russia claimed to have annexed in 2022, is partially controlled by Russian forces, who launch daily attacks on Ukrainian towns and cities from the southern banks of the Dnipro river.
Regional authorities said on Tuesday that three people had been killed by Russian artillery in the region’s largest town, also called Kherson.
One more civilian was killed by a small drone attack on a car in the nearby town of Nikopol.