Mafia suspected in south Italy school blast

A bomb exploded in front of a girls' school in southern Italy, killing a 16-year-old girl and wounding seven others with suspicion quickly falling on the local Mafia.

The explosion, near the entrance of a school named after the wife of murdered anti-Mafia judge Giovanni Falcone, occurred as girls were arriving for the start of the school day, which in Italy includes Saturdays.

Authorities said at least two gas canisters appeared to have been placed in or near rubbish containers at the school on Saturday, which local media said was located near the main court in Brindisi, a port city on the "heel" of the Italian peninsula.

Nichi Vendola, governor of Apulia, said after the blast: "To even think about killing children is absolutely barbarous.

"A family sends their child, an adolescent, to school and the child does not come back and another one has a daughter with bloodstains on the school backpack and notebooks.

"Whoever is responsible for this has committed an act that will go down in the history of barbarity. We need to react with severity."

"This is a tragedy," Mimmo Consales, the mayor of Brindisi, told SkyTG24 television.

There was no claim of responsibility and no indication of who had planted the bomb, but initial suspicions were directed at the local mafia, known as the United Sacred Crown.

The Sacra Corona Unita Mafia, active in the region around Brindisi, Apulia, is heavily involved in trafficking drugs, arms and people smuggling and human trafficking.

Consales noted that the incident occurred just a few days before the 20th anniversary of the murder of Falcone and his wife, Francesca Morvillo, by a bomb in Sicily on 23 May, 1992.

An anti-Mafia march had been planned in Brindisi later in the day.

"You can understand the symbolism of this and what it all signifies," he said.

The device went off just before 8am at the Francesca Morvillo Falcone school in the Adriatic port town of Brindisi just as students were arriving for class on Saturday.

Local civil protection official Fabiano Amati told The Associated Press news agency that a 16-year-old female student died of her wounds after being taken to a hospital.

Amati told the television news channel Sky TG24 that several people were taken to hospital, and two pupils were in a critical condition.

According to the website of the Repubblica newspaper, three blasts went off in front of the school, spreading panic among the pupils. The devices had apparently been left in bags in front of the school, it said.

Local media reported that the bomb had been placed in a rubbish container just outside the school, which they said was near the main court in Brindisi, a city located in Apulia, on the "heel" of Italy.

Falcone, his wife and their three bodyguards were killed on May 23, 1992, when the Sicilian Mafia planted half a tonne of dynamite on the road between Palermo's airport and the city centre.