King Emanuel and Signor Mussolini Attend Rome, Jan. 29, The news of the worst explosion in Italy since the Great War, which yesterday took a toll of 100 dead and 1,000 injured, was given in an official communique issued yesterday afternoon and published unobtrusively on the inside pages of the evening newspapers, Not a line other than this appeared.
The catastrophe occurred this morning at about 9.30, at the Segni munitions works, near Tivoli, Although the official communique spoke of "only a few dozen dead and injured," the estimates given by doctors and survivors said that "more than 100 are dead and 1,000 injured," Hundreds of the dead and injured were still buried in the ruins late this afternoon, while rescuers dug frantically to' extricate them before dark.
Signor Mussolini hurried from the wedding of his niece, Rosa Mussolini, to supervise the rescue operations, for which every ambulance and fire-brigade within reach had been summoned.
Following the disaster, cordons of troops and police were' drawn up round the scene and, for a radius of five miles, none was allowed to pass for fear of further explosions,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.