Package explodes at Swiss embassy in Rome, one hurt
Italian police stand at the entrance of the Swiss embassy downtown in Rome, December 23, 2010. Credit: Reuters/Alessandro Bianchi
By Daniele Mari
ROME | Thu Dec 23, 2010 1:51pm GMT
ROME (Reuters) - A package exploded at the Swiss embassy in Rome on Thursday, seriously injuring an employee who was opening it in the mailroom when it blew up in his hands, authorities said.
Bomb disposal experts searched the embassy offices, located in a prosperous part of Rome which houses many foreign embassies, but staff remained in the building following the incident, which occurred at around midday (11 a.m.).
"The ambassador is still on site, the embassy has not been evacuated," Maurizio Mezzavilla, a spokesman for the Carabinieri, Italy's paramilitary police told reporters.
Swiss Foreign Ministry spokesman Lars Knuchel said that so far no one had claimed responsibility for the act. Police said the injured man had been taken to hospital in central Rome suffering serious wounds to his hands.
"The man is an employee of the embassy, he was injured while he was opening a package received in the mailroom which blew up in his hands," Mezzavilla told reporters.
The Swiss ambassador was due to hold a news conference at 1:30 p.m.. Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini condemned the incident.
"We express our full solidarity with the Swiss ambassador and with all the personnel of this diplomatic representation, which has been the target of a deplorable act of violence that deserves our strongest condemnation," he said in a statement.
The explosion, follows the discovery of a rudimentary device in an empty underground train in Rome on Tuesday. However, police said that device lacked a detonator and tests showed it contained no explosive.
The incident occurred at a time of heightened tension over security fears in Europe following a botched attack by a suspected suicide bomber in Sweden this month.
The suspected bomber was killed in Stockholm on December 11. Police believe he was planning to attack a train station or department store at the height of the Christmas shopping season.
(Additional reporting by Antonella Cinelli, Massimiliano Di Giorgio and Sven Egenter in Zurich; Editing by Alison Williams)
