Italy is sending soldiers to help quell fires that have raged for weeks on Sardinia’s Costa Smeralda, the heart of the island’s luxury tourist industry. A company of the Brigata Sassari, the regiment based in Sardinia, recently returned from Iraq, is to be mobilised to deal with a menace that has driven tourists into the sea to be rescued by the Italian navy. The fires, which have been started by what the Interior Minister, Giuseppe Pisanu, called “eco-terrorists”, have repeatedly come within sight of Villa Certosa, the palatial holiday home of the Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi. Three bomb alerts in two days this week on the island – all of which turned out to be hoaxes – have also heightened tension and raised fears that both the fires and the hoaxes are part of a larger campaign to drive tourism, the mainstay of Sardinia’s economy, out of the island. Full Story
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