BERGAMO, Italy, June 16 (Xinhua) - Italian police have identified a man suspected of killing a schoolgirl in 2010 after the biggest ever DNA testing of population in Italy, a statement from the interior ministry said on Monday.

"Police together with judicial forces have found the killer of Yara Gambirasio," Interior Minister Angelino Alfano said in the statement. "According to the DNA in the investigators' possess, the killer of little Yara is a local resident," he added.

According to the Italian press, police in Bergamo, a city in northern Italy, was questioning Massimo Giuseppe Bossetti, a 44-year-old construction worker with no criminal record. The man, who is the father of three children, reportedly denied any wrongdoing.

Last month investigators found after amassing more than 18,000 DNA samples in the biggest ever operation of this kind in Italy that the killer was the illegitimate child of a bus driver who died in 1999, Giuseppe Guerinoni, l'Eco di Bergamo local newspaper said.

Guerinoni's body was exhumed after DNA similarities with a spot of blood on Gambirasio's body were uncovered among his relatives. Investigators found that Guerinoni's DNA has a compatibility of 99.9 percent with the spot of blood.

But as the DNA of Guerinoni's legitimate sons and daughter resulted incompatible, investigators believed that the killer could be his alleged son from an illegitimate relationship in the 1960s or 1970s, and begun a hunt for Gambirasio's mysterious killer whom they named as "Unknown 1."

According to sources who took part in the investigation quoted by ANSA news agency on Monday, the compatibility rate which identified Bossetti was "very high, so high to leave no doubt." Alfano said he wanted to thank everyone for the expertise invested in the difficult search "for this brutal murderer who, finally, is no longer faceless."

Gambirasio, 13, vanished on her way home from gymnastics practice in Brembate di Sopra, a small town near Bergamo, in November 2010. Despite the efforts of search teams, her decomposed body was not found until February 2011 in a clearing some 10 km away from her home.

The autopsy revealed the schoolgirl was stabbed in the back, neck and wrists probably for trying to stop a sex attack. She was left for dead by her attacker and subsequently died from the injuries and the cold, according to investigators.

Her desperate family as well as police and authorities across Italy never stopped the major investigation to find the killer. "If it is true that he is the one, we are really happy," Brembate di Sopra Mayor Diego Locatelli was quoted as saying by ANSA. "We had been waiting for this moment since she was found dead," he said. Endi

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