(COLOMBO, LANKAPUVATH) –A bus carrying 51 schoolchildren was hijacked by its driver and set alight near Milan in Italy.
The children, some of them tied up, were rescued through smashed windows at the back of the bus and no-one was badly hurt. Fourteen people suffered smoke inhalation.
The driver, a 47-year-old Italian citizen originally from Senegal, has been arrested.
“No-one will survive,” the driver was alleged to have said.
“It was a miracle, it could have been a massacre,” Milan chief prosecutor Francesco Greco was quoted as saying.
A teacher who had been on the bus said the suspect – named by police as Ousseynou Sy – was known to be angry about Italy’s immigration policy and about the deaths of migrants in the Mediterranean.
“He shouted, ‘Stop the deaths at sea, I’ll carry out a massacre’,” police spokesman Marco Palmieri said.
