Hundreds of people gathered Monday for the funeral of an Italian police officer stabbed to death in an alleged confrontation with two American teenagers that has sent shockwaves through the country. Grieving family, colleagues and friends filled a church in Somma Vesuviana, the hometown of officer Mario Rega Cerciello, 35, who suffered multiple knife wounds on Friday in an attack that the suspects claim was in response to a drug deal gone wrong.

Two Americans, Gabriel Natale Hjorth, 18, and Finnegan Elder, 19, have been charged with aggravated homicide and attempted extortion following the killing in Rome's upmarket Prati neighbourhood. Crowds applauded as the hearse bearing Cerciello's coffin arrived at the funeral near Naples, to the solemn tolling of church bells.