) by BeppoSAX
was GRB960720, although it was discovered several days after its occurrence.
The first burst promptly localized by BeppoSAX was GRB970111, whose position,
estimated with an error radius of
, was delivered to the
community some hours after the occurrence ([Costa et al., 1997a]); no afterglow
was detected either in the optical or in the radio domain; nevertheless,
this first case of a promptly detected and precisely positioned GRB made it
clear that a breakthrough was near. This just happened with the occurrence
of GRB970228, as already described above: for the first time, the X-ray and
optical afterglows of a burst were discovered ([Costa et al., 1997a], [Groot et al., 1997],
[van Paradijs et al., 1997]).
Since then, great advancements in the observations and interpretation of the
afterglows at several wavelengths have been achieved: to date (Dec 2001)
out of 
50 bursts promptly and precisely positioned with the WFCs,
as many with IPN, and others with ASM/RXTE etc..., the distances
to 24 GRBs have been determined so far.
Nevertheless, none of the afterglows detected up to now belong to any
short duration GRB; the question whether they have afterglows as well,
but only more difficult to detect, or they do not, because they are
produced by different astrophysical processes, is still open:
on this subject, a
recent work has claimed the possible detection of early gamma-ray afterglows
from the BATSE light curves of a sample of short bursts, although
to date no independent confirmation has been announced yet ([Lazzati et al., 2001]).