MILAN — A march against rising prices and war spending came apart in tear gas, fireworks and burning barricades on Saturday, and by evening Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni was demanding on X that Italy’s opposition condemn the violence without ambiguity. Her post said stones had been thrown at police, officers hurt and the march forced to stop.
Euronews described the Italian violence as following unrest in France, including the France student protests. In Milan, the site reported, the march turned violent first in Via Broletto and then in the city centre, above all Piazza Duomo, where police used tear gas, water cannon and hydrants against fireworks and thrown objects. Shops were vandalised and the M1 and M3 metro stations closed.
The marchers were mostly young, and their grievances were largely economic. TASS, citing Corriere della Sera, put the crowd at more than 5,000, protesting expensive petrol and what they called a war economy. RT named the movement Italia in Piazza as organiser. Meloni’s post praises people who marched peacefully, including those who joined the CGIL union’s mobilisation, but does not mention prices, rents or wages.
The counts do not agree. Euronews said 25 people were hurt in Milan, ten of them police officers, and that 50 were detained, half of them minors. RT reported that at least four officers and 20 protesters were reportedly injured, without naming a source for that figure, and, citing the ANSA agency, about 50 detained.
Elsewhere the figures diverge too. Euronews put the Turin detentions at 12, ten of them minors, after about an hour of unrest with bins used as barricades, and the Bologna detentions at seven, where clashes centred on the railway station. RT, citing ANSA, said 36 officers were injured in Bologna, four minors were arrested and seven people were referred to prosecutors.
Milan’s mayor, Giuseppe Sala, said the reasons for the protest were understandable but that “the violence against the police and the serious damage to the city are unjustifiable,” according to Euronews. Pierfrancesco Majorino of the Democratic Party, who sits on the Lombardy regional council, condemned the violence while warning against using it to criminalise peaceful students.
Next door, France protest arrests have passed 2,000, Anadolu reported, citing Interior Minister Laurent Nunez. In Rome, TASS reported, again citing Corriere della Sera, that CGIL leader Maurizio Landini accused the government of putting armaments ahead of wages and announced a general strike for November 20, on top of one already set for October 30.
None of the reports TEH read carries a statement from Italia in Piazza, the movement RT names as the march’s organiser, and none says who threw the first stone.
