Italian police seize 121 sticks of TNT from WWII shipwreck

Explosives were being tapped by 'Ndrangheta mafia

(ANSA) - Reggio Calabria, May 21 - Italian police on Wednesday seized 121 sticks of TNT recovered by navy divers from the hold of a freighter that was sunken in World War II. Anti-mafia police in the southern Italian city of Reggio Calabria believe the stash of TNT sticks of 200 grams each was tapped and used in the past by members of the Reggine clans of the Calabrian Ndrangheta mafia.

Divers from the Comsubin unit of the Italian navy, which is based in the Tuscan city of La Spezia, removed the dynamite from the freighter Laura C, wrecked in July 1943 off the coast of the toe of Italy's boot in the Ionian sea.

The operation, coordinated by Reggio Calabria's DDA anti-mafia police, took several days. At the centre of the stash was a hole for installing an eventual trigger. Investigators said mafia clan members used the hole to collect the dynamite.