An Italian tax collector was injured in the hands by a letter bomb when it exploded at the headquarters of Equitalia, a state agency that collects overdue taxes and fines.

Italian news agency AGI said the agency’s Director General Marco Cuccagna had lost part of one finger but his life was not in danger, Reuters reported.

Rome judicial sources said investigators believed the attack on Equitalia was linked to a letter bomb sent to Josef Ackermann, chief executive of Deutsche Bank, which was intercepted in Germany on Wednesday before it reached its target.

The investigators also believe the Rome attack was carried out by the same anarchist group responsible for two letter bomb attacks against the Swiss and Chilean embassies in Italy just before Christmas last year, which injured two people.

German police said the bomb sent to Ackermann was accompanied by a letter in Italian signed by a group called the Informal Anarchist Federation, which claimed responsibility for the bombs in Rome last year as well as a device that injured two people in the offices of a Swiss nuclear lobby group in March.

The letter to the Deutsche Bank chief spoke of “three explosions against banks, bankers, fleas and bloodsuckers”, police said.

Reuters