Slain pro-Palestinian activist laid to rest in Italy

Friends and family of Vittorio Arrigoni, an Italian activist abducted and killed by al Qaeda aligned militants in the Gaza Strip, bid their last farewells at a funeral service on Sunday in his hometown in northern Italy.

Hundreds of people paid tribute to the body of Arrigoni, who was 36, and attended his funeral in the quiet town of Bulciago, some 35 km (21 miles) north of Milan where his mother is mayor. One of the prelates who presided at the funeral mass was Archbishop Hilarion Capucci of the Greek-Melchite Catholic Church. Capucci was arrested by Israel in the 1970s for smuggling weapons to the Palestine Liberation Organisation in a diplomatic car. (Reuters)