Milan: two days of rioting and looting in the city centre; police detain hundreds, most of them minors

Hooded groups looted shops, set fires and clashed with police in central Milan on Saturday and Sunday, October 17 and 18, after a march against the rising cost of living, according to Reuters, Euronews and the Italian news site Il Post. Police said 271 young people were detained on Sunday alone, Reuters reported. The government has said it will send 500 more soldiers to the city.

Saturday: the march and the first clashes

The Saturday demonstration, called Italia in piazza, began at 3 pm in Piazza del Duomo. Il Post reports that most participants were students who had organised online, largely on TikTok. Euronews says a CGIL trade union march also took place that afternoon. Clashes began in Via Broletto, where police held the march for about an hour; after stones and bottles were thrown, officers charged.

While the march itself stayed largely peaceful, hooded groups smashed shop windows and tram shelters around the Duomo, Corso Vittorio Emanuele, Piazza dei Mercanti and San Babila, Il Post reports. It says a Foot Locker on Corso Vittorio Emanuele was looted. Police used tear gas and water cannon, and the Duomo metro station was closed. Worshippers at a service in the cathedral were led out through an underground passage, according to Il Post.

Euronews said 25 people were taken to hospital, 10 of them police officers, and that 50 people were detained, half of them minors. Al Jazeera, citing the agency LaPresse, also reported about 50 detentions and at least two injured officers. Il Post's count for Saturday is 72 people stopped, 22 reported to prosecutors and 12 arrested, five of them minors.

Sunday: looting in the centre

Violence resumed at around 5 pm on Sunday between Piazza del Duomo and Via Torino, where a Carrefour supermarket was looted for food and alcohol, Il Post reports. Reuters says Decathlon, Arc'teryx and Vodafone stores were ransacked; Il Post also lists Levi's, Under Armour and an Enel shop, and says the Rinascente department store and a McDonald's had windows smashed. Spanish outlet Demócrata, citing the Adnkronos agency, says groups threw stones, chairs and firecrackers at police and Carabinieri, and that the cathedral's main doors were temporarily closed.

Who was held, according to police and prosecutors

The figures come from different police operations and are not directly comparable:

• Sunday detentions: Reuters says police detained 271 young people; of those taken to police stations, 32 were arrested, including 23 minors and 13 foreign nationals, and 28 more were reported to judicial authorities. Reuters does not say how the minor and foreign-national counts overlap.
• Share of minors: Il Post, citing police, says more than 200 people were stopped on Sunday, 160 of them taken to the police headquarters, and about 80 per cent were minors.
• Who they were: Police said the violent groups did not belong to any organisation, student collective or social centre and acted spontaneously, without coordination, Il Post reports. Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi described them as groups of thugs, mostly minors, who had gathered suddenly and spontaneously through social media, according to Il Sole 24 Ore.
• Prosecutors: Milan prosecutors spoke of destructive acts of rare violence and said some of those arrested showed considerable criminal capability, the German agency dpa reported via Blue News.

Injury counts also differ. The Associated Press, via PBS, reports 14 security officers injured over the weekend.

The government's response

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni wrote that demonstrating is a right but "setting our cities ablaze is not," according to Al Jazeera. Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini said 500 army troops would be sent to "defend Milan", Reuters reported. Dpa says they will reinforce the existing Strade Sicure army mission, and that a security decree the cabinet could discuss on Tuesday may allow arrests up to 48 hours after an offence and preventive detention of up to 24 hours. Reuters, citing Corriere della Sera, says Meloni is considering extending preventive detention for minors. Milan's mayor, Giuseppe Sala, said the protesters' reasons were understandable but the violence and damage were not, Euronews reported.

Smaller clashes took place on Saturday in Turin, Bologna, Brescia and Bergamo. Euronews reports that 12 people, 10 of them minors, were stopped in Turin carrying petrol bombs and other objects, and that seven were detained in Bologna.