A rare moment of tenderness is exchanged between an Italian policeman and a refugee woman as police fired water cannons at migrants protesting their eviction from a building in Rome.
The officer intervened to comfort the crying woman as some refugees threw bottles, stones and even gas canisters at police, who responded with jets of water.
The clashes broke out in the capital’s Piazza Indipendenza, where refugees, many of them Eritreans who have fled one of Africa’s most brutal regimes, have been camped out for days.
The confrontation left the piazza strewn with blankets, mattresses and overturned rubbish bins, while small fires burned on the pavements.
Around 400 refugees were evicted at the weekend from a building that they have occupied for the last four years; many had been sleeping rough since.
Rome city council said they had been offered alternative accommodation but many of the refugees wanted to remain in the area.
City authorities accused radical Left-wing activists of “infiltrating” the refugees and persuading them to turn down offers of accommodation.
Two refugees were arrested – one of them as he was giving an interview to an Italian television station.
A Catholic charity, the Missionaries of San Carlo Borromeo, said the refugees were “victims twice over” – once for having fled their homeland in the Horn of Africa and again for the eviction.
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