An iPhone's charging cable caught fire in Italy over the weekend - and it may not have been an isolated occurrence.

An Italian blogger has described how his iPhone's cable burst into flames at the point of connection with his phone. You can find a picture of the damage here and read more about it in Apple's forums.

A Swedish blogger reported the same incendiary difficulty last August, and the photo on his site shows the same type of damage as the Roman one. A commenter on that blog identified only as "Paul" reported this January that the same thing had happened to his iPhone.

In addition, a scantily sourced report on ArticlesBase by a Bahrainian-based blogger tells of similar problems. We have not yet been able to contact the source of that report.

In addition, we reported last September about an unfortunate Swiss iPhone user who alleged that his handset got so hot that it was impossible to hold and that its "backplate become blistered and charred."

Whether these reports describe isolated hardware failures or systemic design flaws is not yet known, but if you have experienced a similarly flaming 'Phone, we'd like to hear from you. Perhaps we can light a fire under Apple's feet.

Apple did not immediately respond to our requests for comment. ®

Related stories

• Exploding iPod backfires on Apple (3 August 2009)
• British Korea ambassador in 'diplomatic' blog shock (17 March 2009)
• Apple laptop ignites marketing department (26 February 2009)
• iPhone lights a fire (9 December 2008)
• Manufacturers recall fire-risk projectors (2 December 2008)
• The world's most deadly handset? (27 November 2008)
• PC vendors recall more blazin' Sony batteries (30 October 2008)
• Owner alleges iPhone 3G became red hot (2 September 2008)