ROME - Journalist Giuliana Sgrena returned to Italy on Saturday, hours after American troops in Iraq fired on the car she was in, wounding her and killing an Italian intelligence officer with her.

A plane carrying Sgrena back from Iraq landed at Rome's Ciampino Airport, where Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was among the dignitaries on hand to welcome her.

Looking haggard, Sgrena - surrounded by relatives and military police - was carried off the aircraft on what appeared to be a stretcher and put into an ambulance bound for a military clinic for an operation on her collarbone.

Sgrena told colleagues from her newspaper Il Manifesto, who met her plane, that her captors "never treated me badly," the Italian news agency ANSA reported.

"She's been tested, but she's alive. Finally, we've gotten to see her," said the journalist's father, Franco Sgrena.

"Giuliana is relatively well," Sgrena's partner, Pier Scolari, told ANSA. "I told Giuliana about everything that people have been doing for her, and she told me about her experience."

Friday's shooting occurred shortly after Sgrena was released after a month being held hostage in Iraq. She left Iraq after being discharged from a Baghdad hospital.

The U.S. military said the car she was riding in after her release was speeding as it approached a coalition checkpoint in western Baghdad on its way to the airport. It said soldiers shot into the engine block only after trying to warn the driver to stop by "hand and arm signals, flashing white lights and firing warning shots."

The Italian intelligence officer, Nicola Calipari, was killed when he threw himself over Sgrena to protect her from U.S. fire, Berlusconi said. U.S. troops took Sgrena to an American military hospital, where shrapnel was removed from her left shoulder.

Sgrena, 56, was abducted Feb. 4 by gunmen who blocked her car outside Baghdad University. Last month, she was shown in a video pleading for her life and demanding that all foreign troops - including Italian forces - leave Iraq.

The shooting came as a blow to Berlusconi, who has kept 3,000 troops in Iraq, and was likely to set off new protests in Italy, where tens of thousands have regularly demonstrated against the Iraq war. Sgrena's left-leaning newspaper vigorously opposed the conflict.

News of the shooting drew immediate criticism Friday from Berlusconi's political foes, who were eager to attack the government for its staunch support of the war.

"Another victim of an absurd war," Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio, leader of the Green Party, told the Apcom news agency.\

Berlusconi summoned the U.S. ambassador to Rome, Mel Sembler, who met with the premier for about one hour.

"Given that the fire came from an American source, I called in the American ambassador," Berlusconi told reporters on Friday. "I believe we must have an explanation for such a serious incident, for which someone must take the responsibility."

U.S. President George W. Bush called Berlusconi and expressed his regret in a five-minute conversation, Bush spokesman Scott McClellan said Friday night. Bush then assured Berlusconi that the incident would be "fully investigated," he said.