Italy's top court has authorised a father to disconnect the feeding tube which has kept his daughter alive for 16 years, removing the last legal hurdle in a landmark right-to-die case that has split the country.

Eluana Englaro, who is now 37, has been in a vegetative state at a hospital in northern Italy since a 1992 car crash.

Her father Beppino Englaro has been battling his way through Italy's courts to seek an end to the life support for more than 10 years.

The Cassation Court, in a verdict released yesterday, rejected as "inadmissible" an appeal against a July ruling by a lower tribunal, which had also authorised - for the first time in predominantly Catholic Italy - the removal of the tube.

The Vatican, which has condemned the earlier ruling as justifying euthanasia, said it had no comment yesterday. Euthanasia is illegal in Italy.

Pro-euthanasia activists hailed the verdict as historic, but political leaders were split over the case, with several Catholic lawmakers criticising it.

"The Cassation Court is authorising the first murder by the state," said Luca Volonte of the Union of Christian Democrats.

The Milan court said it had been proven that Ms Englaro's coma was irreversible and that before the accident she had stated her preference to die rather than be kept alive artificially.

The Englaro case has been compared to that of American Terri Schiavo, who spent 15 years in a persistent vegetative state and was allowed to die after a long court battle.