Italian authorities say an anarchist cell has claimed responsibility for parcel bomb attacks on the Swiss and Chilean embassies in Rome, in which two staff members were injured Dec. 23. A note found at at the scene of the Chilean embassy blast was signed by the "Lambros Fountas Cell" of the Informal Federation of Anarchy (FAI). Lambros Fountas was a Greek anarchist killed in a shoot-out with Athens police in March. "We have decided to make our voice heard with words and deeds," the note read. "We will destroy the dominant system, long live FAI, long live anarchy."

Comparisons were immediately drawn with the string of parcel bombs sent last month to foreign embassies in Athens. A Greek radical network, the Conspiracy of Fire Nuclei, was blamed for those attacks, in which small packages detonated at the Swiss and Russian missions. More than a dozen packages were sent, prompting Greece to suspend international mail for two days.

Authorities suggested the Swiss were targeted in the attacks because they had co-operated with Rome, arresting two Italian anarchists in Zurich earlier this year. Reports also noted that an anarchist, named Mauricio Morales Duarte, was killed in Chile in 2009, apparently when a bomb he was carrying exploded.

Dec. 20 saw an improvised bomb attack on an automatic teller machine in Buenos Aires—the latest in a string of such bombings in the Argentine capital this year, some of which were claimed by the "Pandilla Vandálika Teodoro Suarez," a Chilean anarchist cell. (BBC News, ANSA, NYT, Dec. 24; La Nación, Buenos Aires, Dec. 20)

See our last posts on Italy and the global anarchist scare.

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