At the time the Libeccio base, which until the attack hosted the Italian operational presence in the city together with the Mistral base, had already been evacuated, but was re-occupied for the occasion by the 3rd company of the Lagunari who presided over it together with the Alfa bridge despite being targeted by mortar bombs and small arms during the approach .. On the Italian side, thermal visors and illuminating grenades were used to precisely identify the starting points of the shots, in full residential area and therefore with risk for the population, together with two Mangusta helicopters that from above provided information and protection. This did not prevent an episode that was subsequently investigated by the military prosecutor and articles in the media: a vehicle, which tried to cross one of the bridges by forcing the Italian checkpoint on the opposite access to that of origin, was considered a car bomb and hit by the Italian military who garrisoned it and exploded catastrophically killing passengers including a pregnant woman . According to a reconstruction, the investigation by the Italian military prosecutor found that the vehicle was an ambulance and the explosion was also due to an oxygen cylinder carried on it, but the military interrogated had previously denied having seen flashers and signals of rescue and claimed to have been subjected to gunfire . Subsequently, another reconstruction cited documents published on Wikileaks that denied the use of firearms from the ambulance but confirmed that it had been transformed into a car bomb and that it did not stop at the checkpoint . Overall, the battles led to the loss of the "Libeccio" logistics complex and the retreat of the Mahdi army from the city. The Italian Navy deployed various ships including Minesweepers, Destroyers and the San Giorgio-class amphibious transport dock that covered the role of flagship. Furthermore, marines and sailors alongside naval pilots given support to ground operations. The Italian soldiers and the riflemen of the San Marco were deployed in the south Shiite Shi, a relatively quiet area compared to the provinces sunnite and to the capital Baghdad; the main seat of the contingent was the city of Nāsiriyya, the provincial capital of Dhi Qar, where the Italian Barbara Contini was placed by the provisional coalition authority (CPA) at Head of the civil administration in charge of reconstruction. This did not prevent the Italian soldiers from being the subject of a suicide attack in 2003, in which 19 of the 23 dead were Italian, military and civilian. The terrorists continued to fight on a smaller scale with the operation of guerrilla losing more and more men, means and territories.