{"id":321,"date":"2023-12-08T17:34:04","date_gmt":"2023-12-08T17:34:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brigatafolgore.net\/?page_id=321"},"modified":"2025-04-02T09:53:42","modified_gmt":"2025-04-02T08:53:42","slug":"17-settembre-2009-kabul-attacco-alla-folgore","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/brigatafolgore.net\/en\/17-september-2009-kabul-folgore-under-attack\/","title":{"rendered":"17 September 2009, Kabul, the Folgore under attack"},"content":{"rendered":"

17 September 2009<\/strong> will be remembered as one of the blackest days for the Folgore Parachute Brigade.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"17<\/picture>
The second Lince armoured vehicle where First Corporal Gian Domenico Pistonami was travelling<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

We are in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, and it is the 12.10 p.m. local time<\/strong>, 9.40 a.m. in Italy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The two-armoured Lince patrol of the 186th Parachute Regiment Folgore<\/a> commanded by the Parachutist Lieutenant Antonio Fortunato<\/strong>, is near the Massud roundabout, in the opposite direction to the airport. It is transporting to ISAF headquarters some soldiers who have returned from a short leave in Italy and were picked up at Kabul airport.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arriving at the roundabout Massoud<\/strong> Lieutenant Fortunato's Lynx blocks the road to his right to let the second vehicle pass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few dozen metres and from a side street an old white Toyota Corolla car slips in between the two vehicles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It explodes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first vehicle holds the impact. Inside, the Lynx is incandescent. The rally driver, First Corporal Gian Domenico Pistonami is slumped inside. He is dead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The injured, the 1st Air Force Marshal Felice Calandriello<\/strong> and the Paratroopers 1st Corporal Parachutists Rocco Leo, Sergio Agostinelli and Ferdinando Buono<\/strong> are stunned by the explosion. They get out of the vehicle and immediately receive gunshots: they return fire, securing the area by switching off the frequencies set on their radios: dozens of civilians quickly approach the vehicles and the bodies of the soldiers who died in the explosion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An exemplary behaviour, the result of hard training work and a modus operandi that has always distinguished the Folgore Parachute Brigade: coolness and determination even in the most difficult situations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Parachutist Rocco Leo later stated in the Sky's 'Reduci' docufilm<\/a> that they thought only they had been caught in the explosion and that the first vehicle had managed to get inside the Italian embassy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Around the area the devastation is total: cars, houses and shops destroyed. The scene is apocalyptic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lieutenant Fortunato's heavy Lince armoured car was thrown like a sheet of paper a hundred metres away. The car, it would later become known, was driven by a kamikaze and had 150 kg of explosives on board, according to the ROS investigation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They died instantly on Parachutist Lieutenant Antonio Fortunato<\/strong>, the Parachutist Sergeant Major Roberto Valente<\/strong>, i First Parachute Corporal Massimiliano Randino<\/strong>, Davide Ricchiuto<\/strong> e Matteo Mureddu<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There were also many dead and wounded among the Afghans, including five policemen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The news reached Italy immediately and the drama entered the families of the fallen and all Italians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The claim came immediately, after a few minutes: a Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid claimed the attack in a text message reporting that a man named Hayutullah had blown himself up against the ISAF military convoy in the centre of the capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the biggest military loss in the international arena since the Nassirya attack of 12 November 2003<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here comes the condolence of the highest offices of state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Defence Minister La Russa, historically close to the Paratroopers of Italy will define in parliament \"infamous and cowardly\"<\/em> the bombers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Parachute Brigade suspends all exercises in Italy, the municipality of Siena (headquarters of the 186th Regiment) postpones all scheduled appointments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bodies of the fallen will arrive in Italy on 20 September aboard a C-130, welcomed at Ciampino airport by the grieving but proud families of their husbands, sons and brothers.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"17<\/picture>
Monday 21 September 2009 flags at half-mast, in sign of mourning, in Italian schools: it is the day of commemoration of the 6 Paratroopers who fell in Kabul<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Also present at the arrival of the bodies were the President of the Republic Giorgio Napolitano and other high state officials. The next day, 21 September, a day of national mourning, a solemn state funeral will be held in the basilica of St Paul Outside the Walls in Rome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The event, presided over by Monsignor Vincezo Pelvi, Military Ordinary, will be broadcast worldwide by RAI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is a sad day, where an entire nation rallies around six young lives deprived of their future for having fulfilled to the full the duties the state had assigned them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is a sad day where thousands of Paratroopers, wearing the glorious amaranth beret, will invade Rome and the Basilica to honour their brothers fallen in arms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, in Kabul, the Folgore continued to carry out its work with an operational efficiency that will leave all coalition allies stunned ISAF<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was precisely this modus operandi on the part of the men in the amaranth beret that annoyed the rioters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The military considerations about this attack are well known: the Italians, the Folgore in particular, were 'bothering' the Taliban militia. The Folgore in these months<\/a> mission did not stay in tents and patrol the centres of large cities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Folgore went further. Because of the conformity of its units (in this respect it was defined by General Bertolini, ISAF Chief of Staff, 'one of a kind'<\/em>) carried out an unprecedented hunt for the Taliban.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It went deep, made itself felt in the furthest places, giving security to peoples overwhelmed by terrorist mentality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And it annoyed. It annoyed to the point of being hit with a violence never seen even in these places.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it did not back down. Parachutist Colonel Aldo Zizzo, Commander of the 186th Regiment, on the day after the attack, during the flag-raising declared to his men that despite the losses \"...the mission goes on. We will not leave Afghanistan a minute earlier than planned at the beginning of the mission'.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And it went on, because as always, as happened to El Alamein<\/a> sixty years earlier, and as happened in Mogadishu on 2 July 1993<\/a>the Paratroopers of Italy showed that they can bend, but never break.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus reiterating the concept: drop the coward, not the Folgore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n