Three Italian police officers killed in blast while evicting siblings from house

Three police officers have been killed and another 13 injured in an explosion as they carried out an eviction near the north-eastern Italian city of Verona.

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 kilometres (six miles) southwest of 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 Colonel Claudio Pagano told Sky TG24. He called it “an absolutely crazy gesture”.

The two-storey farmhouse had been filled with gas, and the explosion was set off when authorities opened the door, regional governor Luca Zaia told Sky TG24.

Mr Tito said the eviction had been carefully planned.

“The reaction was so violent, that it was hard to predict,” the prosecutor said.

It was the second time authorities had attempted to evict the siblings, who had occupied the abandoned structure about a year ago. Another eviction attempt was thwarted last year when the siblings threatened to blow the house up, Mr Zaia said.

Maria Luisa Rampini told newspaper 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 on Tuesday by the newspaper.

Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni and defence minister Guido Crosetto expressed condolences for the deaths of the carabinieri, part of a national militarised police force that plays a central law enforcement role in Italy.