U.S. Army and Italian officials at Caserma Ederle in Vicenza, Italy, refused to comment Tuesday on an Italian newspaper article that stated in its headline that the base was “in the sights” of terrorists.

The headline to a story Friday in the daily paper Il Giornale Vicenza about an article referring to the arrest last week of three Algerians suspected of being Islamic extremists with links to international terrorism read: “Ederle in the sights of the aspiring kamikaze.”

The article states that the Carabinieri, Italy’s military police and the force that conducted the majority of the investigation, maintain that the three spoke via telephone, and that during one of the last conversations, the suspects spoke of “having explosives ready and wanting to make the Americans pay.”

American and Italian officials at Caserma Ederle declined to comment on the article, said Diana Bahr, a public affairs officer with U.S. Army Garrison Vicenza.

Other international and Italian news agencies reported last week that Italian government sources said no attack was planned in Italy.

Police believe the men were part of a cell from the Salafist Group for Call and Combat, an Algerian militant group that U.S. officials have said pledged allegiance to al-Qaida, Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network.

The three men were arrested Nov. 15, one in Naples and the other two in the northern city of Brescia.

Il Giornale Vicenza reported that one of the suspects, Yamine Bouhrama, who had been arrested in Naples, wanted to finance the new mosque of Vicenza and had worked for two years for a plastic manufacturing company there before leaving and “roaming” in the Campagnia region, where Naples is located.

In the story, the only reference to American bases is the paragraph that states the group of extremists does not exclude operating in smaller cities, such as Naples and Brescia, or “for example, a city with an American [base].”

The paper also ran a photograph of a gate to Caserma Ederle with the information next to it that read “Ederle could have been a possible objective of the terrorists.”