Italy rocked by bomb blasts

Two people have been injured in separate explosions at the Swiss and Chilean embassies in Italy.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility but the incidents bore similarities to an episode in Greece last month in which far-left militants were suspected of sending parcel bombs to foreign governments and embassies in Athens.

The Italian news agency ANSA said a suspect package had also been found at the Ukrainian mission but the embassy later said no dangerous items had been found after a search of the package.

Police said the injured Swiss embassy employee had been taken to hospital in central Rome suffering serious wounds to his hands after he opened a package in the mailroom.

Bomb disposal experts searched the Swiss embassy offices, located in a prosperous part of Rome which houses many foreign embassies, but staff remained in the building following the incident, which occurred at around midday.

The explosion at the Chilean embassy came in early afternoon, hours after the earlier incident.

Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini condemned the incident at the Swiss embassy: "We express our full solidarity with the Swiss ambassador and with all the personnel of this diplomatic representation, which has been the target of a deplorable act of violence that deserves our strongest condemnation," he said in a statement.

The explosions follow the discovery of a rudimentary device in an empty underground train in Rome on Tuesday. However, police said that it lacked a detonator and tests showed it contained no explosives.