ROME, Aug 7 (AFP) - Italy said Saturday it is giving "maximum attention" to the latest in a series of threats by a group linked to Al-Qaeda that its cells were ready to strike in the country once an August 15 deadline passes for Rome to withdraw from Iraq.
Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu said the new threat earlier Saturday was part of a greater media campaign by the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades to destabilize Italy`s support for its US allies in Iraq, but that it would be taken seriously.
"It requires maximum attention because because faced with terrorism no signal of risk can be discounted or underestimated," Pisanu said in a statement released by his ministry in Rome.
Pisanu said Italy`s security forces would remain on their present level of alert.
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has been a high profile supporter of the US-led "war on terrorism" and Italy maintains a contingent of nearly 3,000 troops in southern Iraq as part of a peace-enforcement effort.
A statement released by the "Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades -- Al-Qaeda organization" said: "Our cells in Rome and the rest of the Italian cities have prepared ... and the delay set for your (Italian) government is nearing its end."
"If you are wise, you would take the decision to withdraw from Iraq or else every place will be a target at the end of the deadline," the group said in a statement published on an Islamic website.
"The war is getting close," it warned.
"We ask you (cells) to prepare to strike any target in front of you after the expiration of the deadline given to the Italian government," it said.
On August 1, pan-Arab newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi published a statement in the name of the group in which it threatened to attack Italians everywhere unless Rome pulled its troops out of Iraq within 15 days.
On Tuesday, the same group published another statement criticising Berlusconi for saying in the past that Western civilisation was superior to the Islamic world.
The group had also threatened Italy on July 16 with a bloodbath on the scale of the September 11, 2001, attacks which killed thousands in the United States if Berlusconi remained in power.
The Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades claimed responsibility for the March 11 train bombings in Madrid, which killed 191 people, as well as for November 2003 bombings in Istanbul that killed 25 people.
On Tuesday, Pisanu said Italy had received 17 threats via Internet since July 1 and was on a high state of alert.