Rome, Italy - Riot at immigrant detention centre, eight cops injured

July 31, 2011 - Rome. Eight police officers were injured overnight as detainees burned mattresses and threw bottles in a riot at an immigrant detention centre outside Rome, Italian news agency ANSA reported on Saturday, as cited by AFP.

The riot broke out when four Algerian detainees were brought back to the centre after trying to escape the closely-guarded Ponte Galeria facility near Rome’s Fiumicino airport – essentially a holding centre for deportations.
The riot lasted around three hours and detainees trashed rooms and threw rocks, bottles and metal pipes at police. Firemen put out several blazes.
The protest follows similar scenes on Wednesday at a centre in Sicily in which 300 asylum-seekers — many of them African migrant workers from Libya – blocked a road and set off fires, asking to be granted refugee status.

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