Italy security alert as Paris attack condemned

Aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo attack

ROME -Italian politicians across the spectrum expressed outrage over the Charlie Hebdo terror attack Wednesday as police in Rome stepped up security at media offices and sensitive potential targets.   
 Premier Matteo Renzi said that he felt "horror and dismay" at the massacre in Paris where suspected Al Qaida gunmen killed at least 12. "Violence will always lose against freedom and democracy," Renzi said, adding he felt close to French President Francois Hollande and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo. Renzi was due to visit the French Embassy in Rome Wednesday evening to express his condolences.
The attack produced "abhorrence" in the Vatican, sources at the Holy See press office said. The sources said the attack was to be contemned on two counts, as it was both terrorism and an assault on press freedom.
 Security sources said "special attention" is being paid to security at journalistic newsrooms in the Eternal City" as part of a general heightened alert. However Italian intelligence service sources said that while the alert is "maximum" there are no "specific signals" of imminent attacks in Italy.
 The situation in Italy is "more peaceful" than in France, the sources said, though the risk of attacks by "loan wolves" cannot be excluded, said the sources.
 Renzi discussed the security situation with Interior Minister Angelino Alfano at Palazzo Chigi and Alfano convened a meeting of his strategic anti-terrorism analysis Committee grouping anti-terrror experts from the forces of law and order and the secret services, official sources said.
 Deputy Senate head Roberto Calderoli, notorious for his anti-Islam stance in the past, commented that "what happened today in Paris pains me deeply but unfortunately I have to say that it does not surprise me".
 "The policy of open doors to all and Mare Nostrum ... have opened a pandora's box for which we will never find the lid".