Prosecutors say Mafia not involved in school bomb

The bomb attack that killed a teenage girl and wounded 10 others in the southern Italian town of Brindisi was probably done by an individual with no links to the Mafia, an official said yesterday.

The attack on the Francesca Morvillo Falcone school, a vocational training institute offering courses in fashion, tourism and social services, has horrified Italy.

"It seems to be the work of a single person," Marco Dinapoli, the prosecutor leading the investigation, told reporters. He said police already had an identikit of the suspect. "The most probable hypothesis is that it was an isolated act," he said, but refused to give details about the suspect.

Early suspicions pointed at organised crime, largely because the school was named after the wife of a murdered anti-Mafia judge Giovanni Falcone and the attack took place days before the 20th anniversary of the couple's death in a bomb attack in Sicily.

But as the investigation has proceeded the idea that the Sicilian Mafia, or a local crime group, United Sacred Crown, might mount such a high-profile attack has appeared increasingly unlikely.

AP