RIOT IN SOUTHERN ITALY AMID RACIAL UNREST

ROSARNO, Italy - Thousands of immigrants protested against racism in a southern Italian town on Friday, after a night of rioting sparked by an attack on African farm workers by a gang of white youths.

• In one of Italy's worst episodes of racial unrest in years, dozens of Africans in Rosarno, in the Calabria region, smashed car windows with steel bars and stones and set cars and rubbish bins on fire late into Thursday night.

• Police said at least one car was attacked while passengers were inside. Several of whom were injured.
• The immigrants, who also blocked a road, clashed with police in riot gear. Police said 7 immigrants were arrested. Thirty-two people, including 18 policemen, were injured.
• The incidents took place after white youths in a car fired air rifles at a group of African immigrants returning from work on farms, injuring two of them.
• "Those guys were firing at us as if it were a fair ground, they were laughing. I was screaming and there were other cars passing by but nobody stopped, nobody called the police," Kamal, a Moroccan, told La Repubblica newspaper.
• On Friday morning some 2,000 immigrants demonstrated in front of the town hall to protest against what they said was racist treatment by many locals. Some shouted "we are not animals" and carried signs reading "Italians here are racist".
• Scattered acts of vandalism by immigrants continued on Friday morning as some smashed store windows. Police said that in two separate incidents Rosarno residents had tried to run over immigrants with their cars.
• Schools and many shops were closed as tensions remained high. One white resident fired live ammunition in the air from a terrace, local media reported. The situation was calm by early evening, although some feared more violence during the night.
• Interior Minister Roberto Maroni ordered more police to the area and set up a task force to look into the causes of the violence.
• Maroni, from the far-right Northern League party that is a junior partner in Silvio Berlusconi's government, sparked controversy when he said one of the reasons for the violence was that illegal immigration had been "tolerated all these years".
• Opposition leader Pierluigi Bersani and several centre-left politicians accused Maroni of fuelling the tensions.
• "Maroni is passing the buck, we have to go to the roots of the problem: Mafia, exploitation, xenophobia and racism," Bersani said.
• Immigrants work in the area as day labourers picking fruit and vegetables. Some 1,500 live in abandoned factories with no running water or electricity and human rights groups say they are exploited by organised crime.
• French medical charity Doctors Without Borders, which has a team in the area, said it has repeatedly alerted authorities to the squalid conditions in which most immigrants live.
• Some 8,000 illegal immigrants work in Calabria and relations with local are often tense.
• Calabria regional governor Agazio Loiero said that while the action of the immigrants was totally unjustified, he acknowledged there had been "a strong provocation".
• Italy has taken a hard line against illegal immigration and has moved to stem a tide of immigrants who board boats in Africa to try to reach its southern shores. Some boats have been turned back on the open seas.

Source: Reuters