  We report the first experimental evidence of Alfvenic ion temperature
gradient (AITG) modes in HL-2A Ohmic plasmas. A group of oscillations with
$f=15-40$ kHz and $n=3-6$ is detected by various diagnostics in high-density
Ohmic regimes. They appear in the plasmas with peaked density profiles and weak
magnetic shear, which indicates that corresponding instabilities are excited by
pressure gradients. The time trace of the fluctuation spectrogram can be either
a frequency staircase, with different modes excited at different times or
multiple modes may simultaneously coexist. Theoretical analyses by the extended
generalized fishbone-like dispersion relation (GFLDR-E) reveal that mode
frequencies scale with ion diamagnetic drift frequency and $\eta_i$, and they
lie in KBM-AITG-BAE frequency ranges. AITG modes are most unstable when the
magnetic shear is small in low pressure gradient regions. Numerical solutions
of the AITG/KBM equation also illuminate why AITG modes can be unstable for
weak shear and low pressure gradients. It is worth emphasizing that these
instabilities may be linked to the internal transport barrier (ITB) and H-mode
pedestal physics for weak magnetic shear.
