The three are historic leaders of the associations representing the families of victims of three of the most painful moments in Italian and local history.

These events are the 1980 Bologna station bombing, the Ustica air crash and the Uno Bianca massacres between the end of the 1980s and 1994.

The August 2, 1980, bombing of the Bologna train station killed 85 people.

Staged by right-wing extremists, it was Italy’s worst terrorist attack since World War II.

On June 27, 1980, a Bologna-Palermo flight by the now-defunct Itavia airline fell into the Tyrrhenian Sea between the islands of Ponza and Ustica, killing all 81 people on board.

The Uno Bianca criminal group in the Emilia Romagna region around Bologna and in the Marche killed 24 people and wounded over 100 others between 1987 and 1994.

Members of the centre-right opposition deserted the ceremony held at the municipal council of Bologna.

ANSA