ROME, March 6 -- About 10,000 Italians paid their respects Sunday to an intelligence agent killed by U.S. troops in Iraq last week while driving with a hostage he had helped free. The hostage, a journalist who was wounded in the incident, suggested that the shooting might have been deliberate.
The body of Nicola Calipari lay in state at a large marble memorial called the Vittoriano in central Rome. Mourners filed past a flag-draped coffin, and many praised the slain agent as a hero. Calipari's wife and two children flanked the coffin. A state funeral was planned for Monday.
Calipari, 50, had helped arrange the Friday release of the journalist, Giuliana Sgrena, 56, who had been held by kidnappers in Iraq for a month.
On Friday evening, U.S. soldiers at a roadside checkpoint fired at a car carrying Sgrena and Calipari to the airport in Baghdad. Calipari was shot in the temple as he leaned over to shield Sgrena, who was hit in the left shoulder. Two other passengers, also intelligence agents, were wounded, Italian officials said.
In Sunday's edition of the newspaper she works for, the Communist daily Il Manifesto, Sgrena said her captors had warned that she might not leave Iraq alive because the Americans "don't want you to return." In a television interview, she speculated that ransom had been paid for her release and that it was possible the United States targeted her because it disapproves of the practice.
"I don't see why I should exclude having been a target of the United States," she said.
Later Sunday, speaking to reporters at a hospital where she is recovering, Sgrena toned down her comments.
"You could characterize something as an ambush when you are showered with gunfire. If this happened because of a lack of information or deliberately, I don't know. But even if it was due to a lack of information, it is unacceptable," she said.
Sgrena's remarks added fuel to a debate in Italy over who was responsible for the shooting. The government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and opposition parties are demanding details from the Bush administration about the incident. U.S. authorities have said the Italians failed to inform military or diplomatic officials that Sgrena was on her way to the airport. They also said the driver of the car ignored warnings to stop.
Berlusconi has been an avid supporter of the U.S. policy in Iraq, and 2,700 Italian troops have been in Iraq for a year and a half. The opposition has demanded a timetable for their withdrawal.
Italian officials have so far declined to detail how Sgrena's release was secured. Several newspapers and a government official have said ransom was paid, with figures as high as $3.5 million cited.
Sgrena on Sunday provided some further details of her month in captivity. She said she was kept in Baghdad and described her abductors, who numbered five or six, as Wahhabis, members of a conservative Islamic sect.
