Wave of letter bombings

Brussels

European Union officials all over the Continent received letter bombs last week—a few of which went off, though nobody was hurt. A bomb concealed in a package addressed to the wife of Romano Prodi, the head of the E.U.’s executive body, exploded at Prodi’s home in Rome. Another letter bomb exploded at the Manchester office of a British member of the European Parliament, and a third at the Brussels office of a German member. Bombs were also mailed to the European police agency headquarters at The Hague and to the European Central Bank in Frankfurt, but they were defused before they exploded. Most of the letters were postmarked Bologna, and police suspect an Italian group known as the Informal Anarchist Federation, which recently vowed to attack “the apparatus of control that is repressive and leading the democratic show that is the new European order.”