Sicilian Politician Slain by Gunmen; Mafia Is Blamed

ROME — In what officials immediately termed a Mafia assassination, two gunmen on a motorcycle murdered a prominent, controversial Sicilian politician Thursday as he drove through a beachside suburb in Palermo.

Salvo Lima--a 64-year-old former mayor of Palermo, a deputy in the European Parliament and a close ally of Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti--died at the scene, police said. He was the most senior political figure to be murdered in Sicily in a decade.

Two aides riding with Lima escaped injury when the motorcycle pulled up alongside the car and the passenger opened fire. Lima escaped from the car but was shot at point-blank range and killed as he tried to flee, Italian police said.

The government ordered the chief of its anti-Mafia task force to the Sicilian capital to head the investigation. “This is a political assassination,” said a spokesman of the prime minister’s Christian Democratic Party.

Lima’s assassination was the third headline murder in two days in Italy. On Wednesday, gunmen killed a city council member in a suburb of Naples in an attack attributed to the Camorra, a mainland branch of organized crime. Thursday morning, police announced the discovery of the body of an industrialist kidnaped Monday near Milan.