US and Italian investigators have found that terrorists might have been able to make their way through more than a mile of tunnels to the American embassy in Rome and place a chemical bomb in the water pipes, a report said on Wednesday. Starting from a manhole at the Piazza Della Republica, where a discarded ladder recently aroused suspicions, the investigators made their way to a spot under the street in front of the diplomatic compound, the New York Times reported on Wednesday. A city public works official said the investigators had no trouble reaching the place near the embassy where a suspicious hole, big enough for a person, was recently dug through a three-foot protective concrete cap on the utility tunnel outside the American embassy. That tunnel is filled with water pipes as well as phone and electrical lines into the embassy, the city technician said. "It is not clear who dug into the utility tunnel or when." "The findings, add weight to a police theory that a group of Moroccan men arrested recently might have been planning an underground attack on the embassy. The men were found with nine pounds of a potentially dangerous cyanide compound and a detailed map of the utility tunnels under the embassy," the Times reported.

Bureau Report