Two Italian generals resigned their posts Saturday amid a growing scandal linking Italian peacekeepers to the torture of Somalian villagers.
Gens. Bruno Loi and Carmine Fiore, who were in charge of an Italian contingent of peacekeepers to the African nation in 1993, asked to be relieved of their commands, and the military complied, the army statement said.The government on Friday set up a commission to investigate growing evidence of atrocities, and Premier Romano Prodi on Saturday promised that the Somalia affair would be handled "in very rapid time."
The newsweekly Panorama has published two issues with pictures and interviews portraying acts of torture and abuse.
In Friday's issues, photographs depict what the magazine says is an Italian soldier raping a Somali woman.
Other charges against Italian troops came to light a week ago and follow similar scandals involving Canadian and Belgian troops who took part in the United Nations' "Restore Hope" mission during the 1993 Somali civil war.
At least three members of a crack paratrooper regiment are under investigation by a military prosecutor for other allegations of torture.
Infantryman Benedetto Bertini, 23, told the magazine that a group of Italian and German peacekeepers took revenge on a village for the death of an Italian lieutenant who was shot leaving his camp.
The soldiers fired machine guns and launched grenades at the town of Jalalaxi for an hour even though the villagers had nothing to do with the lieutenant's death, Bertini said.