A bus carrying 51 schoolchildren was hijacked by its driver and set alight near Milan in Italy.
The children, some of them tied up, were rescued through smashed windows at the back of the bus and no-one was badly hurt. Fourteen people suffered smoke inhalation.
The driver, a 47-year-old Italian citizen originally from Senegal, has been arrested.
“No-one will survive,” the driver was alleged to have said.
“It was a miracle, it could have been a massacre,” Milan chief prosecutor Francesco Greco was quoted as saying.
A teacher who had been on the bus said the suspect – named by police as Ousseynou Sy – was known to be angry about Italy’s immigration policy and about the deaths of migrants in the Mediterranean.
“He shouted, ‘Stop the deaths at sea, I’ll carry out a massacre’,” police spokesman Marco Palmieri said.
Prosecutors said the suspect faced charges of kidnapping, attempted mass murder, causing a fire and resisting arrest.
Mr Greco said officials were still weighing terrorism charges against him.
The suspect was known to police, having been previously convicted of assault and for driving while intoxicated, Alberto Nobili, head of counter-terrorism at the Milan public prosecutor’s office, told a news conference.
Two classes of teenagers and their adult supervisors were being driven from a school in Vailati di Crema to a gym but the driver suddenly took a different route, apparently heading for Milan’s Linate airport, reports said.
When the suspect began threatening passengers with a knife, a boy phoned his parents who alerted the police.
Officers then tried to intercept the bus. The vehicle rammed into police cars before slowing down.
