Bus hijacked in northern Italy

Three armed men, believed to be North Africans, hijacked a bus in northern Italy yesterday, wounding a policeman before freeing all the passengers, police sources said.

A police source said the three, who had a gun and knives, had stopped the bus which was carrying around 20 passengers, mostly students, on a highway between the Piedmont cities of Novara and Alessandria.

They told women and children to get off, forced the driver to take another road but were then stopped by police who had set up roadblocks in the area.

The attackers set the bus on fire with tanks of fuel they had with them, but no passengers were hurt.

"All the passengers were released," said an Interior Ministry official.

"A policeman who was not on duty but intervened has been stabbed, but he is not in serious condition," he said.

Police later captured one of the hijackers, whose motives were not immediately clear. The other two were on the run.