Slovenian President Borut Pahor on Monday became the first leader of a former Yugoslav country to mark the Foibe massacres, when Tito's partisans killed thousands of Italians and dumped the bodies in those carsic mountain pits.
Pahor joined President Sergio Mattarella in laying a wreath at the Basovizza Foiba, where 2,000 Italian soldiers and civilians are believed to have died at the hands of the Communist partisans.
The two presidents joined hands and marked a minute's silence for the victims.
They also laid a wreath at a stone recalling four Slovenian men executed for bombing a Fascist newspaper and killing a journalist.
Premier Giuseppe Conte marked national Foibe Remembrance Day on February 10 by apologising for the failure for many years to pay tribute to the massacres of Italians by Yugoslav partisans at the end of WWII.
The 'foibe' refers to mass killings mainly in Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Istria and Dalmatia during and after World War II against the local Italian population.
Foibe are narrow Carsic pits or gorges into which victims were thrown, sometimes alive.
It is estimated that as many as 15,000 Italians were tortured and killed by Yugoslav communists who occupied the Istrian peninsula during the last two years of the war.
Many of the victims were thrown into the narrow mountain gorges during anti-Fascist uprisings in the area and the exact number of victims of these atrocities is unknown, in part because Tito's forces destroyed local population records to cover up their crimes.
Rightwing and centre-right parties campaigned hard to get Foibe remembrance day set up in 2004, saying that the tragedy had been swept under the carpet by anti-Fascists in the postwar years.
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