|
BRINDISI, Italy – A bomb exploded Saturday outside an Italian high school namedafter a slain anti-Mafia prosecutor, killing a student and woundingseveral others, officials said, and rattling a country alreadytense over a spate of attacks on government officials andbuildings. The device went off a few minutes before 8 a.m. in the Adriaticport town of Brindisi in the country's south just as studentsmilled outside, chatting and getting ready for class at the mainlyall-girls Morvillo-Falcone vocational institute. The school which prepares students for jobs in fashion andsocial services is named in honor of prosecutor Giovanni Falconeand his wife, Francesca Morvillo, a judge who died with her husbandin a 1992 highway bombing in Sicily by the Cosa Nostra. Mesagne Mayor Franco Scoditti identified the victim as MelissaBassi, 16, from the town. Brindisi civil protection agency officialFabiano Amati said she died of her wounds after being taken tohospital. One of the shaken students who witnessed the attack told reportersthat one injured girl, her hair charred, screamed the name"Melissa, Melissa" when she realized her friend was gravelyinjured. Amati said at least seven other students were hospitalized, butsome news reports put the figure at 10. Perrino health directorGraziella Di Bella said most of them suffered burns andshrapnel-like wounds, and several had undergone surgery. "The explosion sent out fragments and flames .. pieces of iron,"Di Bella told Sky TG24 TV in an interview. She said a team of fourpsychologists were working with the students. "One of the (injured) girls asked me: 'What do we have to do withthis?" Di Bella said, adding the students were feeling a sense of"disorientation, terror" as well as anger. Dr. Paola Ciannamea, a Perrino Hospital physician who helped treatthe injured, told reporters that one of them was a teenage girl whowas in a grave but stable condition after surgery. Anti-Mafia prosecutor Cataldo Motta, based in the nearby port ofLecce, told reporters that there had been no claims ofresponsibility. He added that the bombing didn't appear to be thework of organized crime, since fuel and not dynamite, the Mafia'straditional choice of explosive, was used. Motta said the"international terrorism" angle was unlikely, but stressed thatinvestigators had not ruled out any hypothesis. Italy has been marking the 20th anniversary of the attack on theSicilian highway that killed the prosecutor and his wife, but itwas unclear if there was an organized crime link to Saturday'sexplosion. Interior Minister Anna Maria Cancellieri, in charge of domesticsecurity, said she was "struck" by the fact that the school wasnamed after the slain hero and his wife, but she cautioned thatinvestigators at that point "have no elements" to blame the schoolattack on organized crime. "It's not the usual (method) for the Mafia," she told Sky in aphone interview. The Sicilian-based Cosa Nostra usually targetsspecific figures, such as judges, prosecutors, turncoats or rivalmobsters in attacks, and not civilian targets such as schools. The school bombing is an attack of "unprecedented cruelty," theminister said. "The big problem now is to get intelligence" on the attack, saidCancellieri. She added that she had spoken by phone with ItalianPremier Mario Monti, who is in the United States for the G-8summit. Monti's office said that the premier ordered flags flown athalf-mast for the next three days. He pledged that the governmentwould work to crack down on crime and to "favor the maximumcohesion of all political and social forces to prevent the returnin our country of subversive attacks," a statement said. National police chief Antonio Manganelli told Sky TG24 in a phoneinterview that Italy's "best investigators" had been dispatched toBrindisi to determine who was behind the attacks. Nationalanti-Mafia prosecutor Piero Grasso arrived and surveyed the blastscene without making comments to reporters. Manganelli said there were "shadows" of doubt clouding thehypothesis that the school blast was caused by organized crimebecause the Sicilian-based Mafia usually targets preciseindividuals. Still, he said, neither the hypotheses of organizedcrime nor that of subversives have been ruled out. Outside the school, textbooks and notebooks, their pages flutteringin the breeze, and a backpack littered the street near where thebomb exploded. At the sound of the blast, students inside theschool ran outside to see what had happened. Officials initially said the bomb was in a trash bin outside theschool, but later the Italian news agency ANSA, reporting fromBrindisi, said the device had been placed on a low wall ringing thebuilding and near the bin. The wall was damaged and charred fromthe blast. Sky TG24 said the device included three containers offuel. It was unclear if the blast was triggered by a remote controlor by a timer. Public high schools in Italy hold classes on Saturday mornings. The bombing follows a spate of attacks against Italian officialsand government or public buildings by a group of anarchists,including the shooting and wounding of an official from a nuclearengineering firm, which is part of a state-controlled company. Ananti-nuclear anarchist group that previously had targeted Italy'stax collection agency claimed responsibility for the shooting. Authorities have said the Italian anarchists have worked in thepost in close contact with Greece-based anarchists. Brindisi is amajor point of departure for ferries between Italy and Greece, butthere was no immediate indication from investigators of any Greeklink. The attacks and threats lodged against authorities prompted thegovernment earlier in the week to assign bodyguards to 550individuals, and deploy 16,000 law enforcement officers nationwide. Minister Cancellieri indicated that after the school blastauthorities' sense of possible targets had been tested. "Anything now could be a 'sensitive' target," she said, adding thatthe "economic crisis doesn't help." Austerity measures, spendingcuts and new and higher taxes, all part of Monti's plan to saveItaly from succumbing to the debt crisis roiling Greece, haveangered many citizens, and social tensions have ratcheted up. Brindisi is a lively port town in Puglia, the region in thesoutheastern "heel" of the Italian boot-shaped peninsula. Anorganized crime syndicate known as the Sacred United Crown has beentraditionally active there, but crackdowns have been widelyconsidered by authorities to have lessened the organization'spower. The brother of the slain anti-Mafia prosecutor , Alfredo Morvillo,a prosecutor in Sicily, told reporters in Tuscany at a ceremony tohonor his slain sister and brother-in-law that the "Mafia angle is,at the moment, the most credible," ANSA quoted him as saying "I say that because of the place and the timing," ANSA reported, inreference to both the name of the school and the many memorialservices for the 1992 attack that were being held on Saturday. Brindisi's mayor, Mimmo Consales, noted that an anti-Mafiaprocession was scheduled for the town in the evening, but addedthat many such memorial ceremonies were scheduled to be held onSaturday throughout Italy. I am an expert from auto-diagnostic-scanners.com, while we provides the quality product, such as Auto ECU Programmer Manufacturer , China Vehicle Diagnostic Tools, Auto Diagnostic Scanners,and more.
Related Articles -
Auto ECU Programmer Manufacturer, China Vehicle Diagnostic Tools,
|
