Italian police interrogate two in school bombing

ROME: Italian police have interrogated two suspects over the school bombing that killed a 16-year-old girl Saturday and gravely injured five more teens, newspaper Corriere della Sera's website said on Sunday.

"The trail the police are following is that of a terrorist act," said the daily, republishing information from local news site www.Brindisireport.it.

According to Brindisireport, the suspects were "identified thanks to security camera recordings" taken near the vocational school where the blast occurred Saturday morning arund 0545 GMT in the southern city of Brindisi.

Brindisireport, whose site was down Sunday morning because of the high number of visits it received, said one of the suspects was an ex-soldier with knowledge of electronics and close acquaintances who sold gas canisters for home use.

Police have searched the suspects' residences, it said.

There was shock across Italy after the powerful device with three gas canisters and a timer went off just as students were arriving for Saturday classes.

Thousands of young people spontaneously took to the streets of Italy's main cities in emotional demonstrations against the violence, which many protesters blamed on a rising climate of social tension linked to a steep economic crisis.

No one has claimed the attack.

At a demonstration in Rome on Saturday, several participants said the bombing was reminiscent of attacks carried out by far-right and far-left militants in the 1970s and 1980s in a period known as the "Years of Lead".

Speaking on the sidelines of a G8 summit at Camp David in the United States preoccupied with the economic crisis, Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti on Saturday condemned the bombing as "tragic", "criminal" and "unprecedented".