Italy bomb squad expert loses eye, hand to exploding package
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Police in Florence say a bomb squad officer lost an eye and had to have a hand amputated after a suspicious package he was examining exploded before dawn Sunday.
Florence Police Chief Alberto Intini told reporters that the package left outside a shuttered bookshop with links to a group of extreme right activists, CasaPound, had caught the attention of a passing police patrol.
The explosives squad was called to intervene, at about 5 a.m., and that's when the officer was gravely injured, police spokesman Cesare Taraschi said.
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The blast was under investigation.
Italy occasionally sees explosions that authorities have blamed on political extremists. The country suffered bombings, slayings and kidnappings during a period of domestic terrorism in the 1970s and early 1980s.
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Mayor Dario Nardella says peaceful Florence "isn't represented by the horrors" of the blast.
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Florence Cardinal Giuseppe Betori decried criminals who wanted a "bloody passage from the old year to the new."