One student has been killed and seven others injured in a suspected mafia bomb blast at a school in southern Italy.
Two powerful explosions scattered deadly shrapnel across a wide area just as students were arriving for lessons.
Melissa Bassi, 16, suffered horrific injuries in the blast and was taken to hospital but died a short while later.
Doctors are still battling to save the life of another victim, Veronica Capodieci, whose condition has been described as "life threatening".
Paramedics and police were immediately at the scene and TV footage showed the blast area as shocked students gathered outside the building.
Officially there was no immediate link to organised crime and no claim of responsibility.
However, prosecutors and politicians said they were working on the theory the tragedy may be linked to an anti-mafia protest and that the local mafia, the Sacra Corona Unita, may be involved.
Italy's Prime Minister Mario Monti, who is at Camp David attending a G8 summit, condemned the attack as a "vile act of murder" and expressed his condolences to the family of the teenager killed in the blast and all those injured.
He pledged the government would fight "all types of crime" and seek to prevent a return to Italy's violent and "subversive" past, marked by mafia car bombings and politically motivated murders.
The blast went off close to the Francesca Morvillo Falcone school in the southern Italian town of Brindisi - home to the Sacra Corona Unita, who have close links with the Russian and Albanian mafia and are linked to drug and gun running.
The school is named after the wife of anti-mafia judge Giovanni Falcone, who were both killed in a bomb blast on May 23, 1992, which was carried out by the Sicilian mafia.
The devices, connected to gas canisters and hidden in rucksacks went off about 30 metres from the Brindisi courthouse.
Students arriving for lessons caught the full impact of the blasts, with shrapnel from the canisters piercing the shutters of nearby shops and blowing out windows of apartment buildings overlooking the scene.
TV footage showed scenes of desperation as shoes and rucksacks were scattered over the floor, abandoned by students.
Brindisi's mayor Cosimo Consales said: ''This is an unprecedented attack by organised crime.
"The name of the school and the planned anti-mafia march is all too much of a coincidence," he said, adding that just two weeks ago a local anti-extortion racket campaigner had cheated death after a powerful device went off under his car.
Local MP Alfredo Mantovano was also at the scene and said: ''There is an anti-mafia meeting taking place at the moment with the prosecutors and forces of law and order.
"This is the first time in Italy that a school has been targeted and this is the most terrible aspect of all this."
One eyewitness who works in the court building overlooking the school told Italian media: "I was just opening the window when the blast caught me in full.
"When I looked down I saw all the kids on the floor, they were covered in black and their books were on fire.
"It was an infernal scene. Who could have done something like this? They were just kids."
The European Caravan for Legality is an anti-mafia protest that left Rome last month and was due to wind its away across Italy promoting initiatives against organised crime.
Giovanni Falcone and his wife were killed along with their three-strong security escort when the Sicilian mafia detonated a bomb under a motorway as his convoy made its way from Palermo airport to the city centre.
Just two months later his successor Paolo Borsellino was also killed in a car bomb in Palermo as he visited the apartment block where his mother lived.
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