Police have evacuated beaches along a stretch of coast in southern Sicily and warned residents to stay in their homes after a pack of stray dogs who killed a 10-year-old boy at the weekend struck again, attacking a German tourist Tuesday.
Doctors said the 24-year-old German woman was fighting for her life in a Catania hospital.
She had reportedly been walking along the beach near the town of Scicli when she was surrounded by the dogs, who attacked her and inflicted injuries to her face, legs and arms.
A group of locals were able to save the woman and scare the dogs off.
''They were tearing her apart and they would have killed her if people hadn't intervened,'' one eye witness said.
''There were a dozen or so mostly small-sized dogs in the pack and they were very aggressive,'' the witness added.
In Sunday's attack, the boy had been cycling past the dogs when they surrounded him, pulled him off his bike and killed him.
The attack came just hours after two separate incidents in which a nine-year-old boy and a 40-year-old man were bitten.
Around 30 of the animals were caught Monday and police stepped up the hunt Tuesday following the latest attack, using helicopters to help spot strays.
The pack, being referred to by Italian media as ''the killer dogs of Scicli'', is thought to number around 50 animals.
Following appeals from animal rights organisations and after two strays were shot dead by policemen who said they had been attacked, the health ministry stepped in to safeguard the dogs' welfare.
''The dogs should be captured in the way that tigers and lions are captured - with anaesthetic,'' said Welfare Undersecretary Francesca Martini.
''I'm fighting to avoid a slaughter that would make Italy a Third World country. The capture of the dogs must happen in respect of the law,'' she said, adding that she was ''aware of the absolute gravity'' of the recent attacks.
Ragusa Prefect Carlo Fanara, under whose authority Scicli lies, ordered police to follow Martini's recommendations as they tried to round up the remaining strays.
Animal protection society ENPA meanwhile warned that it would take legal action against anyone who killed the dogs during the hunt, stressing that ''killing animals is a punishable crime''.
LAV CALLS FOR MASS STERILISATION.
Animal rights group LAV called on the government to issue an emergency decree making the sterilization of all dogs in Italy compulsory and banning the sale of the animals in order to ''turn off the tap'' on dog abandonment.
LAV estimates there are around 450,000 stray dogs in Italy, most of whom are in the south of the country.
On Monday the organisation warned that around 1,600 town councils ''systematically ignore'' laws requiring them to take responsibility for rounding up strays and accommodating them in public kennels.
Scicli Mayor Giovanni Venticinque has admitted that the town was not equipped with public kennels but said the council did not have sufficient funds to build the facilities.
Venticinque claims the stray dogs ''were not strays'' but had been legally entrusted to a private citizen.
A 64-year-old man who had been granted 'custody' of the pack was arrested Sunday in connection with the boy's death and accused of failing to keep the dogs under control.
The fate of the captured dogs lies in the hands of the local health authority.
Sicily's regional health chief, Massimo Russa, meanwhile called an emergency meeting Wednesday to discuss the problem of stray dogs in the province of Ragusa.
