369 fatal workplace accidents Jan-May, up 3.1% says INAIL

(ANSA) - ROME, JUN 28 - The number of fatal workplace accident reports in Italy between January 1 and May 31 this year is 369, 3.1% higher than last year, workplace accident insurance agency INAIL said Friday.
    The rise was also due to multiple-death incidents, it said.
    Friday saw three more workplace accidents in Italy in a spate of job fatalities that union UIL said kills more people than the mafia.
    A 21-year-old construction worker died in Sicily while another worker fell to his death from a motorway maintenance site into the northern Italian Adda River, and another 21-year-old, a farm worker, was crushed to death when his tractor overturned at Minturno near Latina south of Rome.
    The latest trio of deaths are part of several several recent workplace accidental fatalities in Italy - another two on Tuesday.
    Almost 500 people have been killed in work accidents in Italy so far this year, the national observatory on the phenomenon said last Friday. There were about 1,000 last year, it said.
    Five men died after inhaling toxic gas in a sewer network near Palermo last month, and seven died in a hydro power plant blast near Bologna in April.
    Eight workers were injured, five critically, in an explosion at an aluminum plant in Bolzano last week. One has since died of his injuries while others are said to be still fighting for their lives from their critical burns. (ANSA).