Anarchists claim Italian letter bomb: sources

ROME (Reuters) - An Italian anarchist group claimed responsibility for a letter bomb that injured the chief of a state tax collection agency in Rome Friday, police sources said, days after a device linked to the same group and addressed to a top banker was intercepted in Germany.

The bomb exploded at the headquarters of Equitalia, which collects overdue taxes and fines, police said. The agency's director-general, Marco Cuccagna, had lost part of one finger and injured an eye, but his life was not in danger.

Police sources said the bomb was accompanied by a note signed by a group called the Informal Anarchist Federation.

A letter bomb sent to Josef Ackermann, chief executive of Deutsche Bank, which was intercepted in Germany on Wednesday before it reached its target, was accompanied by a similar note, the sources said.

The letter to the Deutsche Bank chief spoke of "three explosions against banks, bankers, fleas and bloodsuckers," German investigators said.

The same group claimed responsibility for two parcel bomb attacks against the Swiss and Chilean embassies in Italy just before Christmas last year, which injured two people, as well as a device that injured two people in the offices of a Swiss nuclear lobby group in March.

Rome police chief Francesco Tagliente told reporters the bomb could have arrived at the tax collection offices as early as Tuesday.

Cuccagna was injured while doing his "duty" providing "an essential public function for the functioning of the state" Prime Minister Mario Monti said in statement of sympathy.

(Additional reporting By Roberto Landucci, Antonio Denti and Daniele Mari, editing by Barry Moody)