Migrants bused from riot-struck southern Italian town; pellet wounds migrant nearby

Migrants bused from riot-struck Italian town

ROSARNO, Italy — Some 300 African migrants were bused early Saturday out of a southern Italian town rocked by two days of clashes between the migrants, police and local residents.

Police said another migrant was wounded in a pellet gun attack in a nearby town.

Many of the migrants from Ghana, Nigeria and other African countries have been camping out in tents and cardboard shelters in an abandoned cheese factory with no heating and broken windows on the outskirts of Rosarno.

They also alleged they were earning illegally low wages — as little as €20 euros ($30) for a 12-hour days picking citrus fruit and other crops. Despite chronically high unemployment rates in Italy’s underdeveloped south many residents don’t want to do the backbreaking seasonal farm work.

The rioting began after two men — one from Nigeria, the other from Togo — were lightly wounded by a pellet gun attack Thursday. Migrants blamed the shooting on racism and groups of protesters stoned police, attacked residents and smashed shop windows and cars.

Police said late Friday that at least 37 people had been wounded, including five migrants, 14 residents and 18 police officers. Three migrants were seriously hurt when they were beaten with metal rods, police and hospital officials said.

Police reinforcements were being stationed at intersections and in piazzas to help keep order Saturday, Varratta said.

Eight buses transferred the African fruit pickers from Rosarno to a temporary shelter elsewhere in Calabria, the largely impoverished, agricultural region in the “toe” of Italy.

Several hundred others were choosing for now to stay, said Luigi Varratta, prefect of Reggio Calabria.

“Calm has been restored for the most part,” said Laura Boldrini, a United Nations refugee agency official.

Six miles (10 kilometers) away in the town of Gioia Tauro, an African man was reported slightly wounded in the leg Saturday morning from an attack with a pellet gun, according to Carabinieri paramilitary police.

Opposition politicians accused Premier Silvio Berlusconi’s conservative coalition, which includes an anti-immigrant party, of failing to enforce a crackdown requiring immigrants to have a job and proper housing to be granted residence permits.