Blast Outside Italian School Kills One

A bomb that exploded outside a school in the port town of Brindisi, southern Italy, killed at least one 16-year-old girl and injured 10 others. There was no claim of responsibility and there are suspicions the school may have been targeted because it was named after the wife of an assassinated anti-Mafia prosecutor. Officials first pointed the finger at a local mafia group as a suspect but investigators later said the bombs seemed too basic and the targeting of an all-girls school was completely out of the norm for an attack by organized crime, reports Reuters.

The school’s principal said that the attack was carried out “to kill the girls” because the bomb had a timer and went off at a time when students are known to be entering the school, reports the Associated Press.

The attack comes at a time when there has been an increase in violence against government officials and public buildings in Italy by groups that seem to want to emulate domestic terrorists that operated in the country around the 1970s and early 1980s, notes the New York Times. The school attack  has increased fears that the violence of those decades might return at a time when Italy is facing economic turmoil.