(ANSA) - Italy stopped for two minutes at noon on Friday to silently commemorate the victims of last Thursday's London bombings and to demonstrate its defiance of terrorists.
Gondoliers in Venice stood to attention by their boats, financial operations were suspended on the stock exchange in Milan and all over the country, from Palermo to Turin, public administrations stopped work.
Flags on the parliament and government offices flew at half mast, MPs in the House and Senate stopped their debates and Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi interrupted a meeting with unions and employers.
Air and rail travellers also paused for thought after authorities announced the initiative over public address systems. Check-in desks at airports stopped work and no planes took off. At rail and metro stations, trains waited till 12.03 to leave and most passengers paused in quiet contemplation.
Both the RAI state broadcaster and the private Mediaset network stopped their television programmes for two minutes, showing still pictures of the scenes in London after the bombs.
Along the bottom of the screen ran Tony Blair's comment that: "Terrorists can kill, but they can never destroy our way of life, our capacity for resistance and our love of freedom." Judges and prosecutors gathered in Milan as they staged a strike against government reforms also suspended their meetings out of respect. The pope, on holiday in the Alpine village of Les Combes d'Introd, prayed for the victims of the bombings in his private chapel. Prayers were also said in the Vatican at the same time.
The death toll from the bombings on three underground trains and a bus currently stands at 53 but may still rise.
