Rome - An ambulance, lights flashing, stops briefly as several protestors attempt to block its path. Then, under sweeping rain, the vehicle moves forward into the night.

The footage, aired repeatedly on Italian television, marked the journey of Eluana Englaro to an old person's home in the north- eastern city of Udine.

Also screened are photographs - dating from the late 1980s or early 1990s - of a tanned young woman, her smiling face framed by the long dark curls of her hair.

Eluana has spent the last 17 years in a vegetative state following a car accident, and her case is now captivating public attention in Italy.

It is also fuelling debate over right-to-die issues and euthanasia in the mostly Roman Catholic country, and prompted intervention from Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's conservative government.

Comparisons have been made with Terry Schiavo, a US woman who after years in a vegetative state was taken off life support and died in 2005 amid controversy.

Last week the 38-year-old Eluana's father and legal guardian, Beppino, had his daughter moved to Udine's La Quiete home.

There doctors on Friday disconnected the tubes that have supplied her body with nutrients and water.

Beppino who has battled Italy's courts for years, says Eluana is finally being allowed to "die with dignity."

According to her parents, Eluana, after visiting a friend in hospital who was himself left comatose following an accident, said that in similar circumstances she would rather be left to die than be subjected to the invasive medical care used to keep her friend alive.

Based on this testimony, Italy's top court, the Cassation, in July 2008 upheld a previous ruling for the removal of Eluana's life- support system.

The decision outraged church officials, Catholic politicians and others who said it amounted to euthanasia, a procedure not permitted under Italian law.

A group of nuns who since 1994 had been caring for Eluana in a clinic in near her hometown of Lecco, pleaded with Beppino to allow them to continue looking after his daughter rather than to let her die of hunger and thirst.

But as the process at La Quiete home appeared to be moving towards a terminal phase, those who maintain it is cruel and inhuman to let Eluana die intensified their efforts to keep her alive.

The Vatican's newspaper appealed for "calm and equilibrium," but questioned assertions made by some right-to-die activists and medical experts that Eluana's passing would be painless.

"We've now learnt it may take between two to three weeks for her to die, and that it will be necessary to administer sedatives, because we cannot be sure that she will not feel pain," the Osservatore Romano said.

The head of Italy's Catholic Bishops Conference, Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, put it more bluntly.

"Not giving a person food and water, how can we call this anything but murder?" he wrote in an editorial of the Catholic daily L'Avvenire.

Many people on both sides of the debate, say the dilemma Italy is facing over Eluana has been caused by the absence of legislation governing "living-wills".

Such documents, would allow people to specify beforehand what type of medical assistance they wish to receive when they find themselves in a condition in which they are unable to communicate.

Meanwhile, in a race against time, Berlusconi's government is tabling in parliament a controversial bill, which seeks to overturn the court ruling.

Earlier Italian President Giorgio Napolitano refused to sign a government decree immediately blocking the process to terminate Englaro's life.

Napolitano motivated his decision on the grounds that the government should not interfere with a procedure approved by Italy's independent judiciary.

Many in the centre-left opposition such as Democratic Pary leader Walter Veltroni backed Napolitano. Berlusconi has triggered an "institutional crisis" Veltroni said.

Some denounce what they say was Vatican meddling in the affairs of Italy whose constitution specifies the country's secular nature.

Berlusconi dismissed the criticism and in an apparent reference to Beppino Englaro, said: "As a father, I would never pull the plug on a person... It seems to me it is nothing but an attempt to get rid of something causing discomfort."

Beppino who has never allowed photographs of the comatose Eluana to appear in public, replied to the Prime Minister in a letter sent both to him and Napolitano.

"Father to father, I asked them to come to Udine and in private see for for themselves the real condition my daughter is in." (dpa)