Modena (Italy) (AFP) - Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on Sunday visited people wounded by a driver with a history of mental health problems who ran over several pedestrians in a city centre in northern Italy.

The driver, a 31-year-old Italian man of Moroccan heritage, hit several people in central Modena before crashing into a shop window, colliding head-on with a woman.

“For the moment, what is become most clear, is that this personal situation is of a psychiatric nature,” Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi said Sunday, after a meeting with officials at Modena city hall.

“I’m not trying to minimise it,” he added. “There are sometimes situations in which the reasons overlap, that someone acts for terrorism or for outer reasons. Let the investigators do their work.

“The city should be reassured from this point of view, in the sense that this is a dramatic, tragic, isolated episode,” he said.

He joined other politicians who have praised the reactions of citizens who capture the driver after he tried to flee the scene.

Some far-right politicians seized on the incident as a justification for further tightening controls on immigration, even though the alleged perpetrator is an Italian citizen.

But the city’s centre-left mayor Massimo Mezzetti pointed out that two Egyptian nationals had helped stop the knife-wielding driver when he tried to run off.

- ‘Psychological disturbance’ -

Eight people were wounded in Saturday’s incident in Modena, four of them seriously, including a woman who had to have both legs amputated, officials said.

Meloni cancelled a planned visit to Cyprus to go to Modena, a government source said.

The far-right leader travelled with President Sergio Mattarella to a hospital treating the wounded.

Security camera footage broadcast by Italian media showed a car being driven at high speed into a city centre street packed with pedestrians and cyclists.

The suspect tried to flee the scene but was chased and cornered by four passers-by, then pulled a knife and injured one of them.

The driver, an economics graduate born in 1995 who was not known to the police, went through a spell of “psychological disturbance” in 2022, city prefect Fabrizia Triolo told journalists on Saturday.

“He had been treated at a mental health centre for schizoid disorders, but we lost track of him after that initial period of observation in a care facility,” she added.

According to the prefect, the driver was not under the influence of “psychotropic substances”.

His home near Modena has been searched but sources quoted in the Italian media said the investigation had so far shown no sign of the man’s radicalisation.

- Pedestrians tackled suspect -

The far-right Liga (League) party, a member of Meloni’s governing coalition, said the incident showed the need for legislation to revoke residency permits for immigrants when they commit crimes.

League leader Matteo Salvini said that the integration of second-generation immigrants in Italy had “failed”.

But the city’s mayor Mezzetti said Modena should “unite against those who want to divide and sow hatred” and called for a gathering in the city centre on Sunday evening.

“That is the best response to the vultures on the social media who are trying to use this extremely serious incident for political ends,” he said.

Elly Schlein, leader of the main opposition Democratic Party, will also visit the city on Sunday.

Meloni wrote on X that the incident was “extremely serious”.

“I would also like to express my thanks to the citizens who courageously intervened to detain the perpetrator, as well as to the law enforcement officers for their response,” she added.