ROME — A bomb exploded outside an Italian high school named after the wife of an assassinated anti-Mafia prosecutor, killing one student and wounding at least seven others, officials said.
ROME — A bomb exploded outside an Italian high school named after the wife of an assassinated anti-Mafia prosecutor, killing one student and wounding at least seven others, officials said.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility, and police were trying to determine who had planted the bomb. But an anti-Mafia prosecutor said it didn’t appear to be the kind of attack organized crime has carried out in Italy. The bombing also followed a spate of attacks against Italian officials and buildings by a group of anarchists.
The device went off a few minutes before 8 a.m. Saturday in the Adriatic port town of Brindisi in the country’s south just as students milled outside, chatting and getting ready for class at the mainly all-girls Francesca Laura Morvillo Falcone vocational institute. Saturday is a school day in much of Italy.
The school — which prepares students for jobs in fashion, tourism and social services — is named in honor of Morvillo, a judge who died along with her husband, anti-Mafia prosecutor Giovanni Falcone, in a 1992 highway bombing in Sicily by the Cosa Nostra.
The student killed by the bomb was Melissa Bassi, 16, known to her friends in Brindisi for her sunny smile and dream of becoming a fashion designer, said Franco Scoditti, the mayor of the nearby town of Mesagne. She died of her wounds at a hospital, said Brindisi civil protection agency official Fabiano Amati.
One of the shaken students who witnessed the attack told reporters a wounded girl, her hair charred, screamed the name “Melissa, Melissa” when she realized her friend was severely hurt. Bassi, along with several friends, had just gotten off a bus from Mesagne that took them to their school.
Amati said at least seven students were hospitalized, but some news reports put the figure at 10.
Graziella Di Bella, the health director at Perrino Hospital, said most of them suffered burns and shrapnel-like wounds, and several were undergoing surgery.
“The explosion sent out fragments and flames … pieces of iron,” Di Bella said. She said four psychologists were working with the students. “One of the (injured) girls asked me: ‘What do we have to do with this?” Di Bella said, adding the students were feeling a sense of “disorientation, terror” and anger.
“It’s pure terrorism,” said Italy’s national anti-Mafia prosecutor Piero Grasso after consulting in Brindisi with investigators. He sounded angry as he left the scene of the bombing. “May no one touch our kids!” he shouted as he got into a car.
Anti-Mafia prosecutor Cataldo Motta, based in the nearby port of Lecce, told reporters there were no claims of responsibility. He added the bombing didn’t appear to be the work of organized crime, since fuel and not dynamite, the Mafia’s traditional choice of explosive, was used.