Italian authorities said on Friday security was being ramped up at "sensitive" sites across the country after an Orthodox Jew was repeatedly stabbed on a Milan street by a masked attacker.
"Vigilance and control will be intensified" at Jewish synagogues and lsrael-linked targets, the department of public safety said in a note to the government's top representatives in Italian cities and to police chiefs.
Forty-year-old Nathan Graff was attacked from behind at around 8.30 pm on Thursday outside a Kosher restaurant near his home in a Jewish suburb of the Milan. He is the nephew of Milan rabbi Hezkia Levi.
"I'll kill you," Graff's assailant reportedly hissed before running off after a bystander intervened.
"My brother-in-law has just come out of surgery and is out of danger. He was stabbed nine times," Graff's brother-in-law Shmuel Hezkia told Adnkronos.
"He was stabbed three times in the back, three times in the face, once in the arm, once in the throat and the face. They saved his sight,"Hezkia added.
The attack is being probed by Italian anti-terrorism prosecutors and police investigators were studying security camera footage from the street where Graff was stabbed in a bid to identify his attacker.
A security source told Adnkronos the current evidence pointed to a "one-off" attack. It would be "premature" to link the attack to the wave of stabbings and gun attacks on Israelis by Palestinians since early October, the source said.
The Milanese and Italian Jewish communities voiced concern and condemned the attack, which featured prominently in Israeli news bulletins on Friday.
Renzo Gattegna, the president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, said on Friday that Italian Jews would not be intimidated by the attack.
Milan's mayor Giuliano Pisapia and the Islamic Cultural Centre's president Abdel Hamid Shaari also deplored the stabbing.
