Bomb lacked detonator and could not explode, police say
A suspected bomb was found in an empty underground train carriage in Rome on Tuesday, but police said it lacked a detonator and could not have exploded.
The device, described by one police source as rudimentary, was found by a driver preparing a train for service in a marshalling yard near the Rebibbia metro station at about 0900 GMT, transport authority ATAC said.
It was in a box with cables, batteries and antennas, an ATAC spokesman said.
"It didn’t have a detonator, it couldn’t explode," a spokesman for the Carabinieri, Italy’s paramilitary police force, told Reuters by telephone.
He said it contained a small quantity of explosive powder.
Officers were called "immediately" and isolated the area where the bomb was found but the station was not evacuated, ATAC said.
The metro system continued functioning as normal during the operation.
Giampaolo Polizzaro, a spokesman for Rome city council, said the authorities were checking closed-circuit television footage at all the stations that the Line B train passed through on its way from southwest Rome, through the historic centre, to northeast Rome.
"They are checking to see if someone entered the station with something in their hands," he said.
The website of the Corriere della Sera daily quoted a police source saying it could have been a pipe bomb.
Rome mayor Gianni Alemanno said the news was "worrying" and congratulated the security forces for their quick reaction.
The device was discovered at a time of increased tension in Italy following anti-government protests last week that descended into some of the worst violence in Rome for years.
A senior Iraqi official said last week that al-Qaeda was planning attacks in the United States, Britain and Europe around Christmas.
A suspected suicide bomber was killed in a botched attack in Stockholm on Dec. 11. Police believe he was planning to attack a train station or department store at the height of the Christmas shopping season.