Italy monitoring 1,000 'potential jihadists' - magazine

(ANSA) -Rome, November 26 - There are about a thousand "potential jihadists" in Italy that police and intelligence authorities have been continually monitoring over the past five years, a preview of an article by L'Espresso magazine showed on Thursday.
    According to the article, investigators do not think an assault on the scale of the November 13 attacks in Paris is possible in Italy but they are "worried about the risk of attacks in cities that are under lesser surveillance".
    Authorities are concerned that "lone wolf" attackers could target churches or historical monuments in smaller cities in the centre and the north of the country.
    The magazine's investigation found that militant Islamists find it difficult to get hold of weapons in Italy, because the majority of the clandestine weapons trade is in the hands of organised crime and mafia groups who "avoid relationships with these individuals".
    This is one of the reasons why a planned attack like the one in Paris, which involved a large number of accomplices, would be unlikely to go unobserved in Italy.