Is Lucifer loose on Sicily? No lesser figure than the honorary president of the International Association of Exorcists believes he may be. "What is happening is what normally happens when the devil enters the lives of those who let him in," Father Gabriele Amorth said yesterday as scientists and officials confessed themselves unable to explain a string of fires and explosions which began in the middle of last month in the fishermen's quarter of a Sicilian village. Thirty-nine inhabitants of Caronia, on the north coast, were preparing to spend their third night away from their homes last night, having been evacuated at the weekend. Since then, in an operation that could have come straight from the television series X Files, a multi-disciplinary team of experts armed with measuring devices has been examining the area for clues to the spontaneous combustion of washing machines, dishwashers, refrigerators, electricity meters and cables. Gianfranco Allegra, of the Italian Centre for Electro-technical Experimentation, told the newspaper Corriere della Sera that he had watched as "an electrical wire lying on the floor that was not plugged in to the mains inexplicably caught fire". When he reported the incident to his superiors in Milan he was told to sober up.
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