Italian cop hurt in far-right bookshop blast

ROME: A police explosives expert was seriously injured on Sunday when a device placed outside a far-right bookshop in the central Italian city of Florence blew up, police said.

The officer suffered serious injuries to a hand and an eye, city police chief Alberto Initmi told RaiNews24 television.

Police called in an explosives team after a patrol spotted a suspicious package outside the bookshop, which has ties to a far-right group called Casa Pound.

As the experts approached the package, the blast occurred, said investigators cited by the Italian news agency AGI. The device had been fitted with a timer, they added.

Casa Pound first emerged in Rome in 2003.

The movement now has several hundred members, who stage protests against the European Union (EU) and immigration.

CasaPound is an Italian political movement founded in Rome on 26 December 2003 with the squatting of a state-owned building in the neighbourhood of Esquilino in Rome. In 2010, 23 families and a total of 82 people lived in CasaPound.

Subsequently, the phenomenon is spreading with other squatting, demonstrations and various initiatives, becoming a political movement.

In June 2008 CasaPound therefore constituted an ‘association of social promotion’ and assumed the current name CasaPound Italy.