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Italian police say explosion threat was a hoax

A armed man who threatened to blow himself up in a hall in Rome where around 2,000 members of the Jehovah's Witnesses church were holding a meeting has been arrested.

After jumping onto a stage in the hall, the man issued the threat and claimed he was carrying explosives.

The hall was then evacuated while the man barricaded himself inside a room on the first floor of the building.

Police later managed to arrest him.

Italian police said the man was armed with nothing more than modelling clay moulded to look like explosives and an unloaded pistol.