ROSARNO, Italy — Hundreds of migrant workers, most of them Africans, went on a rampage Friday in a southern Italian town in a second day of rioting, with authorities reporting at least 37 wounded, including 18 police officers and five migrants.
Violence ebbed and flared throughout Friday in Rosarno, a town near the western coast of Calabria in the "toe" of the Italian peninsula. The clashes in the volatile area had begun a day earlier, when two migrants were wounded by pellet fire, said a top police official, Renato Cortese, in the regional capital.
Police reinforcements were being sent in the next hours, likely during the night, with the exact number still being decided, the Interior Ministry said.
Friday evening, another two migrants were wounded in the feet and legs by pellet fire, and three more were seriously injured when they were beaten with metal rods, police and hospital officials said.
The two migrants shot Friday were in the hamlet of Laureana di Borrello, 10 kilometers (6 miles) from Rosarno, said Cortese. There was no information about the attacker.
Officials at Santa Maria degli Ungheresi Hospital in the nearby town of Polistena said one of the migrants beaten by metal rods had surgery for a kidney injury and another was treated for an eye socket injury, and the third wounded in the attack was taken to another hospital for brain surgery.
The rioting began after Thursday's shooting, in which two men – one from Nigeria, the other from Togo – were lightly injured. The foreigners angrily blamed that shooting on racism, and groups of protesters stoned police, attacked residents and smashed shop windows and cars.
Friday, angry migrants, mostly from African nations, some armed with metal bars or wooden sticks, scuffled with police and residents in the streets of Rosarno.
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