(ANSA) - A major anti-terrorism drill in Naples left five people injured for real on Saturday when two ambulances involved in the exercise collided with each other in the city centre. The two ambulances crashed while speeding to the scene of a simulated terrorist attack at Naples main railway station in Piazza Garibaldi.
The injured were all ambulance crew members, two of whom had to be taken to hospital with suspected broken bones. Another victim of the drill was a young female volunteer who suffered a panic attack after a fake explosion on an underground railway train.
The morning drill, held to test the city's readiness to deal with terrorism, involved four separate 'attacks' in different parts of the city which left some 30 'dead' and more than 100 'injured'. The exercise began with a fake explosion on a bus parked in an area of the city close to the sea and packed with hotels. Two cars were also involved in the explosion which caused a total of seven 'deaths'.
This was followed by a suicide bomb attack on the city's port which 'killed' another four people and 'critically injured' six. The drill proceeded with an alarm at the Piazza Garibaldi station caused by a suspicious rucksack lying abandoned near the ticket office.
Finally, a fake attack was staged on the underground railway network which alone caused 16 'deaths' and 90 'injuries'.
Some 750 police, firemen and medical and emergency staff took part in the exercises, which brought traffic in the city centre to a standstill as entire areas were cordoned off. Naples Mayor Roso Jervolino Russo said the drill had gone successfully, suggesting no serious flaws had been exposed.
"Naples citizens should feel a sense of security given the successful outcome," she said. Naples' top administrative officer, Prefect Renato Profili, agreed that the drill had gone well and said more would be held in February of next year. The drill followed similar exercises in Milan and Rome, all ordered by Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu in the wake of the July terrorist bombings in London.
Turin is also expected to hold a drill.
While Italy's emergency services have been tested in terrorism drills before, these have only involved individual units and nothing on such a major scale has ever been attempted. When the drills were announced in August, there was immediate media speculation that the government had information of a specific threat. But Premier Silvio Berlusconi, a firm ally of US President George W. Bush, brushed off these concerns, saying that Italy was no more at risk than any other European nation.
"This is an alert that affects all Western countries," he said. "There is no individual country that can say it is more or less at risk."
