ROME, May 20 (AFP) - A former Italian government minister was shot dead in a Rome street Thursday, reviving memories of the worst days of the country's urban guerrilla warfare. Massimo D'Antona, a former junior transport minister, trade unionist, labour law professor and current adviser to the labour minister and mayor of Naples, Antonia Bassolino, was wounded by three bullets fired by two gunmen at 8:30 a.m. (0630 GMT), police said. The attackers fled on foot and D'Antona died later in hospital. There were two reported claims of responsibility for the killing, one from the "Armed Phalanx" and another from the extreme left-wing Red Brigades, famous for their urban terrorism of the 1970s and 1980s when some 400 people were killed. The alleged claim by the Red Brigades was contained in a 28-page document that was sent to Italian newspapers. The document refered to NATO, the war in Kosovo and sided with the Serbs in their fight against US "imperialism." It also criticized the policy of Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema's Left Democrats party, the main component in the left-leaning coalition government. It said traditional values of the left had been abandoned and labeled D'Antona one of the masterminds of the government's economic and social policies. D'Alema said late Thursday his government was "not afraid" of terrorism. "Terrorism wants to weaken and destabilize Italy at a particular moment" in international politics, he said, adding that the violence "is to take Italy back into the past. "They have already been undone once; they will be beaten again; we will arrest them," he said. At a rally held at the site of the shooting Thursday evening, Bassolino said the government had "official confirmation of the terrorist origin of this attack." Officials said there was evidence of a carefully prepared assassination, noting that vans with tinted windows were found nearby and had probably been used for reconnaissance. D'Antona, a minister in the government of Romano Prodi between between 1996 and 1998, was a one-time member of the legal commission of the country's biggest trade union, the CGIL. On the news of his death, President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi and D'Alema visited the Sapienza university morgue where his body was lying to pay their respects. The "Armed Phalanx" was a name used to claim responsibility for 1993 attacks against museums in Florence, Milan and Rome that were later blamed on the Mafia. ANSA news agency, which received the telephoned "Armed Phalanx" claim, said Il Messaggero and the Corriere della Sera received telephone calls indicating that the document claiming responsibility could be found in a trash bin and in a flower tub. Il Messaggero declined comment on the report. After both houses of parliament heard a statement from Interior Minister Rosa Russo Jervolino, Walter Veltroni, the head of the Left Democrats, the leading government party, said: "This is a terrorist act, in the way it was planned, by the target chosen and in the way it unfolded." The murder "seems to take us back to a grim climate that we thought we had finally left behind us," Veltroni said. Other politicians compared the killing to that of Ezio Tarantelli, an economy professor and trade unionist killed by the Red Brigades in 1985. The Red Brigades were founded by Renato Curcio in 1973. They are held responsible for a series of deadly killings including the kidnapping and death of former prime minister and then leader of the Christian Democrats, Aldo Moro, in 1978. Curcio never committed any crimes himself but he also never gave up on his political beliefs and struggle. He was released after 17 years in prison in 1993. About 200 people are still being detained in Italy for their involvement in terrorist activities.  