SMS sparks vigil for hostages
2004-09-05 12:40
Rome - Candles have been placed in the windows of thousands of homes throughout Italy in response to a text message calling on people to remember the hundreds of children killed in the Russian hostage drama.
The spontaneous gesture came after people began receiving an SMS which read: "light a candle at a window tonight for all the children killed in Ossetia: pass the message on," Italian daily Corriere della Sera reported on Sunday.
The message snowballed, spreading from mobile phone to mobile phone, until hundreds of thousands of calls had been sent, according to consumer organisation Telefono blu.
Officially 338 people - at least half of them children - died after special forces launched an assault on a school in southern Russia where a group of militants was holding over 1 000 people hostage. But the final toll is expected to be much higher.
The initial text message was sent by Allesandra Servadori, a teacher in the northern city of Bologna, who contacted her friends, telling them: "this could have been our children", the paper reported.
The initiative was subsequently picked up by the politicians.
Green parliamentarian Paolo Cento called on Italians to "launch a genuine solidarity link so that in each window, on each balcony, a candle can be a reminder of the children who died in the Beslan massacre".
The mayor of Rome, Walter Veltroni, also welcomed the move and had candles lit in windows of the town hall in the Italian capital.