Italy Tunnel of Death

Stretching for 11 1/2 miles beneath central Italy's rugged Apennine mountains, it is one of Europe's longest railway tunnels and carries the nickname La Direttissima because it provides the most direct route between Florence and Bologna. Last week the Italian press renamed it the "Tunnel of Death."

Two days before Christmas, Train 904, an express bound from Naples to Milan with 700 holiday passengers aboard, was roaring through La Direttissima at 90 m.p.h. when a time bomb exploded in a second-class carriage. The force of the blast blew in the double-paned windows in most of the train's 14 cars. Antonio Algieri, 33, one of those wounded by the flying glass, described the scene as "a hurricane of slivers--and then so much terrible screaming in the dark." The train came to a stop, and thick smoke billowed through the tunnel, initially frustrating rescue attempts as dazed passengers stumbled around in the blackness.

When rescue teams eventually reached the wreckage, they found that the ninth car of the train had been demolished by the blast; at least 15 people were found dead and 80 were seriously injured. It was Italy's bloodiest terrorist act since the authorities began to gain the upper hand in the fight against political extremists two years ago.

Within hours, a number of outlawed groups of both the left and the right claimed responsibility for the blast. Official suspicion centered on neo- Fascist terrorists, since the Christmas attack took place in the same tunnel in which right-wing extremists bombed a train in 1974, killing twelve and wounding 48. In 1980 neo-Fascists planted a bomb in the waiting room of the Bologna railway station: 84 died and some 200 were injured.

Investigators looking into last week's explosion theorized that the bomb was concealed in a piece of luggage and placed on a fold-down seat in the crowded corridor of the car in which the blast occurred. The type of explosive used remained unidentified. Shortly after word of the disaster spread, police issued a description of a dark-haired young man who was seen by a number of witnesses as he leaped off the train at the Florence station, where 904 stopped for ten minutes an hour before the explosion. The man was carrying an athletic bag that appeared to the witnesses to be empty.

Within hours of the explosion, Prime Minister Bettino Craxi convened a special meeting of government officials in Bologna to discuss the crime. The attack, the Prime Minister said, was the product "not of madness but of something more: a diabolical logic that directs itself against our country."