Italy boosts security fearing more anarchist attacks

Italy's government has raised the alert level at sensitive sites nationwide after an anarchist group shot and wounded the head of a nuclear energy company, the interior minister said Sunday.

"The risk of an escalation of anarchist terrorism is real," Anna Maria Cancellieri told Italian dailies, adding that soldiers could be deployed to guard some sites.

Relevant agencies had been ordered "to raise the alert level around sensitive targets throughout the country," she said.

The Informal Anarchist Federation (FAI), which has links to Greek extremist groups, on Friday claimed responsibility for the attack in Genoa that wounded Roberto Adinolfi, the head of nuclear energy company Ansaldo Nucleare.

Genoa prosecutor Michele Di Lecce said the claim by FAI, which has threatened eight further actions to demand the release of anarchists jailed in Greece, "appeared reliable."

In December 2011 the group claimed a letter bomb attack against the director general of the Italian tax collection agency Equitalia, which wounded him in the face and hands -- one of several similar attacks over the past decade.

Meanwhile, anarchists are suspected of having placed two Molotov cocktails outside an Equitalia office in central Livorno overnight Friday.