Fatal School Bombing Stokes Fears of New Italy Violence

The New York Times reports, "Fatal School Bomb Attack Raises Fear of Strife in Italy":

BRINDISI, Italy — A bomb exploded Saturday in front of a school in this southern city, killing a student and wounding at least five others, local officials said, raising fears of a return to the kind of violence that shook Italy decades ago.

The explosion occurred near a vocational school named after Francesca Morvillo, a magistrate who was killed with her husband, Giovanni Falcone, an anti-Mafia prosecutor, by a Cosa Nostra bomb on May 23, 1992, an event Italy planned to commemorate on its 20th anniversary.

The bomb went off as students were preparing to enter the school on Saturday morning before classes. It consisted of three gas canisters tied together, set off by a rudimentary timer, and had been placed next to a wall not far from the school’s main gate, said an Italian official who asked not be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the news media.

Witnesses described the panic that followed the explosion as “an inferno,” while television stations broadcast the eerily silent aftermath, with knapsacks, textbooks and notebooks strewed across the asphalt in front of the school, pages flapping in the wind.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, and the authorities said Saturday that investigators would examine all possibilities, including links to the Sacra Corona Unita, the organized crime syndicate rooted in the southern region of Puglia, and domestic or foreign terrorism.

“It’s difficult to form an idea because killing students is without precedent, and doesn’t correspond to any of the models of Italian terrorism,” said Salvatore Lupo, a professor of contemporary history at the University of Palermo. “There’s no logic, but with terrorist attacks there is no logic.”

Piero Grasso, the prosecutor who leads the anti-Mafia judicial agency, described the bombing as an act of “pure terrorism,” because, he said, “Every parent will think when they send their child to school: could they be in danger?”

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The report indicates that political strife has been rising during the economic crisis.

Check The Guardian as well, "Bomb left outside school in Italy kills girl and injures seven."