Mail bombs exploded in the hands of employees at the Swiss and Chilean embassies in Rome on Thursday, seriously wounding two people and triggering heightened security checks at diplomatic missions just as holiday deliveries deluge their mailrooms.
Italian investigators suspected the attacks were the work of anarchists, similar to the two-day wave of mail bombs that targeted several embassies in Athens last month - including those of Chile and Switzerland.
Swiss Ambassador Bernardino Regazzoni, speaking to reporters outside his embassy, said the device that exploded had been mailed, but he didn't say from where.
The bomb at the Chilean embassy was mailed from inside Italy, the Italian news agency ANSA reported. But Chilean Ambassador Oscar Godoy said it wasn't yet clear if the package - a medium-sized envelope big enough to hold documents and addressed to the cultural attache - had been mailed or delivered by a messenger.
"There were no flames, just a little smoke," said Godoy.
The bombs seemed aimed to injure if not maim or kill those opening them.
Surgeons removed an iron bolt that had embedded itself in the chest of the Chilean embassy employee who opened the package, said Massimiliano Talucci, a spokesman for Umberto I Polyclinic, where the man was hospitalized. The Chilean also suffered a serious hand wound and face injuries, and risks losing the sight in one eye. The Swiss official suffered hand and chest wounds.
Chilean envoy Godoy denounced the explosion at his mission as "an absolutely irrational and brutal act," and said there had been no threats to indicate it could be a target.
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