Italy foils plot to blow up Rialto Bridge in Venice

ROME: Three men from Kosovo and an unidentified minor have been arrested in Venice on suspicion of plotting to blow up the city’s celebrated Rialto Bridge, Italian police said on Thursday.

"With all the unbelievers there are in Venice, you put a bomb under the Rialto and you go straight to heaven," one of the alleged jihadist plotters said in a wiretapped conversation, said Adelchi d’Ippolito, the Venice prosecutor in charge of the case.

"That was one the most worrying and alarming remarks we heard," he said at a press conference, revealing that the group had been under surveillance since last year.

The suspects were detained in an overnight sweep carried out after it was established that they had undergone "religious radicalisation", according to a police statement.

Raids were conducted at 12 locations in the historic centre of the city, which is a magnet for millions of visitors from around the world.