ROME: Italian police on Wednesday rescued 51 children taken hostage by their school bus driver, who doused the vehicle in petrol and set it alight apparently in protest at migrant deaths in the Mediterranean.
Photos showed the burnt-out shell of the bus and the car, which were travelling on a road near Milan. The Milan police anti-terrorism unit has been charged with investigating the hostage-taking which lasted a little over 30 minutes.However Sy had no links with Islamic terrorism, Alberto Nobili, head of counter-terrorism at the Milan public prosecutor's office, told a press conference, saying he"acted as a lone wolf".
The driver, armed with two canisters filled with petrol and a cigarette lighter, threatened the children, took their telephones and told the adults to tie them up with electric cable."He threatened us, said that if we moved he would pour the petrol and set it alight. He kept saying there were so many people in Africa who kept dying and that it was the fault of Di Maio and Salvini," a rescued girl told Italian media.
One of the children managed to pick up a phone that had been dropped and call their parents who in turn phoned the police.Police blocked the bus in the street and broke open the back windows to get the children out before the vehicle went up in flames. "I want to put an end to it, I want to stop the deaths in the Mediterranean," several reports cited the driver as saying.Sy had been an Italian citizen since 2004, with reports saying was divorced from his Italian wife and has two teenage children.
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