Italy school bomber Vantaggiato gets life sentence Published duration 18 June 2013

image caption The bombing sent shockwaves across Italy

An Italian court has sentenced to life in jail a man who carried out a school bomb attack in 2012, which killed a teenage girl and injured nine others.

Giovanni Vantaggiato, 69, was convicted by the court in the southern city of Brindisi, where the attack took place.

Prosecutor Cataldo Motta said Vantaggiato had wanted to "intimidate his country".

The attack on 19 May 2012 - which killed 16-year-old Melissa Bassi - sent shockwaves across Italy.

Vantaggiato admitted carrying out the bombing, without giving a motive.

However, he is believed to have been in financial difficulties at the time.

The bomb, placed in a waste bin, exploded as students were arriving for morning classes at the Morivllo Falcone school.

Melissa Bassi was killed and nine other people were injured, some seriously.

Television footage of the scene later showed a concrete wall blackened by fire next to the school's entrance gate, while broken glass and other debris litter the pavement.

The school is named after Judge Francesca Morvillo Falcone, a victim of a notorious Mafia bombing in Sicily nearly 20 years ago.

She was killed along with her husband, anti-Mafia judge Giovanni Falcone, on 23 May 1992.