Letter bomb blast at EU Parliament

A letter bomb addressed to the head of the European Parliament’s Christian Democrat group burst into flames today but did not injure anyone, officials said.

It was the fifth such attack on EU institutions in the past fortnight.

A bomb-disposal squad was sent to deal with a suspicious package in the offices of Jose Ignacio Salafranca, head of the Spanish conservatives in the EU parliament.

Parliament spokesman Andre Riche said a third suspicious package appeared to be false alarm.

In the first incident, a padded envelope caught fire when a member of German MEP Hans-Gert Poettering’s staff tried to open it in the Brussels parliament building.

“Luckily she was not injured but the envelope is destroyed,” said party spokeswoman Fiona Kearns.

Similar letters have been sent to European Commission President Romano Prodi, the head of the European Central Bank Jean-Claude Trichet and the offices of Europol and Eurojust in the Hague, the Netherlands.

An Italian anarchist group is suspected of being responsible.