The target of the attacks were a number of trains headed to Reggio Calabria, bringing workers to the city for the protest march scheduled for the next day.
The attack was part of a larger set of bombings perpetrated by neo-fascist terrorists belonging to the National Vanguard, linked to the Movimento Sociale Italiano party and Francesco Franco, leader of the revolt in Reggio Calabria sparked by the choice of Catanzaro as regional capital.
[citation needed] On July 22, 1970, a bomb exploded on "Treno del Sole", the Palermo-Turin train, in the Calabrian city of Gioia Tauro, killing 6 persons and wounding 136.
In 1993, a former member of the 'Ndrangheta (a Mafia-type criminal organisation based in Calabria), Giacomo Lauro, said he had supplied the explosives to people linked to the leaders of the revolt.
[3] On February 4, 1971, one was killed and 13 people were injured when three grenades were thrown into a crowd demonstrating outside the headquarters of the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement in Catanzaro.
[3] The leftist unions led by the Italian General Confederation of Labour, who abandoned the revolt after the first five days due to violence and exploitation by the neo-fascists, set up a workers march in Reggio on October 22, 1972, named Conferenza del Mezzogiorno, in order to show the city that workers from the whole country were supporting their requests but rejecting the means of violence.
[9] On a less evident level, the unions desire was to weaken the apparent influence of CISNAL and Francesco Franco, demonstrating that the majority of workers were with them.
[citation needed] According to the neo-fascist activist Vincenzo Vinciguerra, who at the time belonged to National Vanguard, the group had been responsible for the bombs.