Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni condemned Wednesday a deadly missile strike on a school in Iran early in the Middle East war, calling for those responsible to be identified."I express my firm condemnation of the massacre of girls at the school in Minab, southern Iran," the far-right leader told the Senate.
She offered her solidarity with the families of the "very young victims" and said she wanted "responsibility for this tragedy be swiftly ascertained".
Iran has accused the United States and Israel of conducting a deadly missile attack on a school on the first day of the war.
US President Donald Trump has blamed Tehran -- but also says Washington is investigating -- while Israel has denied any connection to the strike.
AFP has been unable to access the location to independently verify the circumstances around it or the toll reported by Iranian media, which says funerals have been held for at least 165 people.
Meloni repeated that Italy, an EU and NATO member state, is "not at war and we don't want to enter the war".
- 'Blind eye' -
Trump has said he launched the war because it was the "last, best chance" to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear bomb.
Meloni said Italy was not directly involved in nuclear negotiations so could not "definitively corroborate, or to refute, the US assessments regarding Iran's unwillingness to reach a definitive agreement".
But she said that while the war was "tragic", "we know that these consequences are not even comparable to the risks we would run if we turned a blind eye" to Iran's alleged ambitions.
"We cannot afford an ayatollah regime in possession of nuclear weapons, combined, moreover, with a missile capability that could soon be capable of directly striking Italy and Europe," she said.
Meloni said she was in close coordination with fellow European leaders about the war, but said it was "impossible" to return to diplomacy while Iran continued retaliatory attacks in the region.
Faced with spiking oil and gas prices, Rome is considering cutting excise duty to stabilise pump prices, but has yet to do so.
Meloni warned Wednesday against profiteering, saying the government was ready if necessary to recover "the proceeds of speculation through increased taxation of the companies responsible".
