ROME — Italian law enforcement has taken two suspects into custody following a horrific, premeditated attack that left four migrant farmworkers burned to death inside a parked vehicle in southern Italy’s Calabria region, law enforcement officials and national media confirmed this week. The brutal assault was fully captured on local surveillance cameras, footage of which was aired publicly Tuesday by Italy’s state-owned public broadcaster RAI and multiple other major Italian news outlets.
The deadly incident unfolded at a roadside gas station in Amendolara, a small town located near the city of Cosenza in Calabria. Per details from the surveillance footage analyzed by investigators, attackers snuck up on the occupied parked vehicle, poured an incendiary liquid into the car’s rear compartment before igniting the substance, turning the vehicle into an inferno in minutes. Video footage also shows one of the attackers holding the car doors shut to trap the victims inside as flames spread rapidly through the vehicle.
Miraculously, one person trapped in the car managed to escape the blaze, and was immediately rushed to a local medical facility for treatment of severe burn injuries, RAI reported.
In a formal statement issued Tuesday, Castrovillari Chief Prosecutor Alessandro D’Alessio officially confirmed that four bodies were recovered from the charred vehicle on Monday, hours after the attack, and that two individuals had been detained as suspects in connection with the mass killing.
Preliminary victim identification released by RAI shows the four deceased victims were three Afghan citizens and one Pakistani national, all of whom worked as seasonal agricultural laborers in the region. The two arrested suspects are both Pakistani citizens, according to the broadcaster, and investigators are currently working to unpack the motive behind the deadly attack, which has sent shockwaves across Italy amid ongoing conversations about the treatment and safety of migrant workers in the country’s agricultural sector.