European Union Official Is Unhurt by Letter Bomb

European Commission President Romano Prodi opened a letter bomb Saturday at his home in Bologna but was not hurt when the package, containing a book packed with explosive powder, burst into flames.

Prodi emerged from his home late Saturday to assure the public that he was fine.

Last week, two small bombs exploded near Prodi’s home, also without harming anyone.

A previously unknown anarchist group claimed responsibility for those attacks, saying it had targeted Prodi as a representative of what it considered a repressive “new European order.”

He said the pages of the book had been cut to insert the explosive powder. Prodi noted that, because of the recent threats against him, he had exercised great caution in opening the package.

“I kept it fairly far away. There was a big flame but without an explosion. It burned a piece of furniture and the carpet a bit,” Prodi said.

The book was a copy of the novel “The Pleasure” by Gabriele D’Annunzio, a famous early supporter of fascism until his death in 1938. Prodi joked that the choice of book might have been ironic.

Prodi said the package was addressed to his wife and bore a nonexistent return address in Bologna.

Prodi lives most of the year in Brussels -- where the commission, an executive arm of the European Union, is based -- but he has been spending the Christmas holiday in his hometown in Italy.

On Dec. 21, two small bombs hidden in trash bins exploded near Prodi’s Bologna home. The house was empty, and nobody was injured. The bombs consisted of a cooking pot, a gas cylinder and a timer, and were placed a few feet from the house.

A group calling itself the Informal Anarchic Federation, under the acronym FAI, claimed responsibility in a letter sent from Bologna to the newspaper Repubblica.

The newspaper printed excerpts, in which the group said it was a federation of several organizations that have carried out similar small attacks in recent years.