Mafia bomb claims another Judge

huge car bomb blast in Sicily today along with five bodyguards.

Prime Minister Giuliano Amato promptly vowed that the state's campaign

against the Mafia would continue. He pledged a strong response to those

''at war with with the state''.

The massive blast, which gutted part of a building and left a Palermo

neighbourhood looking like a war zone, came less than two months after a

huge highway bomb killed Judge Giovanni Falcone, then Italy's top

anti-Mafia Judge.

Borsellino, chief public prosecutor in the Sicilian capital, and his

bodyguards took the full force of the blast because the bomb apparently

went off while some of them were approaching their bulletproof cars,

according to Italian reports.

ALISON JAMIESON reports from Perugia: For the second time in less than

two months, the Mafia has proved its staggering omnipotence in Sicily.

On May 24, Cosa Nostra blew up 50 metres of motorway near Palermo to

kill Judge Falcone, his wife and three bodyguards. This afternoon at

5pm, a car bomb filled with 40kg of explosive killed Judge Borsellino,

joint public prosecutor of Palermo as he left the central city apartment

where his mother and sister lived.

The explosion also killed five of Borsellino's bodyguards. It

completely destroyed the three bullet-proof cars of his convoy and blew

out windows of adjacent buildings 11 storeys high.

''These agonising deaths fill us with pain, but also with firmness. I

am certain that the Government, Parliament and judiciary will respond

with the necessary unity of intention and strength,'' Prime Minister

Amato said in response to the Mafia's latest outrage.

One of the bodyguards was a woman. At least 15 people were injured in

the blast, which was apparently set off by remote control. Some were

seriously injured.

The car containing the bomb was parked near a courtyard on a narrow

street where Borsellino had gone to visit his mother and sister.

Borsellino, a Sicilian like Falcone, had helped Falcone in the trial

and was widely seen as his heir in the fight against organised crime.

Both were considered walking databanks on the Mafia.

His badly burned body was found in the courtyard of the building and

was identified at the scene by Pietro Giammanco, another Palermo

magistrate. ''Yes, it's him ... My God, my God,'' he said, lifting a

sheet covering Borsellino's body.

Italian television footage of the scene showed a tangle of cars, blown

out windows, and fires fuelled by petrol on the pavement. The blast was

heard in many sections of Palermo.

''The Mafia have killed the two magistrates who best knew the

organisation. They have physically wiped out their enemies. They appear

to be going down a list,'' said an Italian television commentator.

Interior Minister Nicola Mancino and Justice Minister Claudio Martelli

announced they would fly immediately to the Sicilian capital.

Former Prime Minister and Socialist Party leader Bettino Craxi said

Borsellino was ''a new martyr among the servants of the state''. The

Mafia had once again put the state ''with its back to the wall''.

Like the killing of Falcone, the assassination of Borsellino was

certain to intensify the frustration of Italians embittered by their

Government's failure to break the Mafia, commentators said.

President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, who was elected several days after

Falcone was killed, addressed the nation in a sombre tone.

''Two horrendous crimes in the space of two months. Two aggressions

filled with cowardice and blood against the democratic state,'' Mr

Scalfaro said on television.

The time had come for ''strong and coherent action''.

''It's time to respond,'' he said. ''The democratic state must be

credible. It is time to join together to defeat crime and desolation.''

The explosion was so powerful that fragments of the car were sent

flying up to 50 metres away.

''We are at war. It's a war with no limits and we must prepare

ourselves to resist. We cannot dupe ourselves into believing this is the

end,'' said Palermo mayor Aldo Rizzo.

''This proves that democracy does not reign in this city,'' he said.

A group of Sicilian police bodyguards shouted their anger at national

police chief Vincenzo Parisi, threatening to go on strike from tomorrow

and stop protecting the island's politicians. They said they were tired

of being ''butchers' meat''.

''Escorts don't have any point any more because the state has lost

control of the territory (to the Mafia),'' one bodyguard told Italian

television.

Italy's three biggest trade unions jointly called a general strike in

Sicily for the day Borsellino and the five bodyguards are buried.

Giuseppe Ayala, a former Judge now elected to Parliament, whose house

is only 50 metres away, was one of the first on the spot. ''It's a

demonstration of absolute power,'' he commented. ''It shows the Mafia

can strike whom, where and when it chooses.''

Ayala is convinced of a strong political matrix to the Mafia's

challenge to Italian democracy and that the horrific spate of murders is

the sign that a certain equilibrium has been disturbed.

''Something has broken in the relationship between Mafia and politics,

I can't say what it is but I'm convinced that it must be the case.''

A survey of recent Mafia events supports this theory: in March this

year Salvo Lima, a Christian Democrat Euro-MP and one-time Mayor of

Palermo, was murdered.

Lima was considered by many to be a mediator between influential

political circles in Rome and Palermo and the protector of powerful

Mafia interests. His murder, it is thought, was because he bowed to his

political master in Rome, Giulio Andreotti, to cut some of these links,

his ''punishment'' symbolically timed to coincide with the general

election campaign.

The Falcone massacre occurred as Parliament was embroiled in the

contorted and prolonged voting procedure to elect a new Head of State

and indeed precipitated the election of a conservative, though morally

impeccable President. The attack was widely interpreted as a

demonstration of Mafia contempt for an incompetent country foundering in

chaos.

There have been other disconcerting signs: Toto Riina, the

acknowledged capo dei capi or head of Cosa Nostra, has been on the run

for nearly 30 years. Some believed he was dead, others that he had fled

to South America or some other safe haven from where he supervised the

Mafia's interests.

But two weeks ago, Riina's defence lawyer casually told a journalist

that he had regular meetings with his client -- and always in Sicily.

The Mafia pays its lawyers a lot of money and if they say the wrong

thing, they suffer the consequences.

Therefore such an affirmation can only mean one thing -- that the head

of Cosa Nostra is alive and well and living in Sicily -- and woe betide

anyone with the presumption to challenge that authority.

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