L'ultimo servizio riepilogativo della Reuters da Salonicco, ore 21,04 italiane
EU-SUMMIT-PROTEST (UPDATE 3, PICTURE)L DIP VIO NEWS US ) L21396113
UPDATE 3-Anti-capitalists protesters torch Greek shops
(Updates with new details of damage, arrests)
By Michele Kambas and Phillip Pangalos
THESSALONIKI, Greece, June 21 (Reuters) - Police fired
volleys of teargas in Greece's second largest city on Saturday
to disperse 200 self-styled anarchists who smashed shops and set
fire to buildings including a McDonald's.
The anarchists were among 25,000 mainly peaceful
anti-capitalist protesters who marched in late afternoon through
Thessaloniki's centre, about 80 km (50 miles) west of where a
European Union summit ended earlier in the day.
"They threw petrol bombs into the McDonald's and planted
anarchist black flags on the footpath outside," Reuters
correspondent Phillip Pangalos said. "Others attacked nearby
shops with axes and sticks."
Demonstrators also torched a Vodafone store, witnesses said.
About 30 shops as well as three branches of Greek banks were
badly damaged with windows smashed and petrol bombs thrown
inside.
Riot police used baton charges and teargas to drive the
attackers away from an area about half a kilometre from the U.S.
consulate.
About a dozen shop and building entrances as well as five
cars were on fire more than two hours after the violence broke
out. Thick smoke and clouds of teargas billowed from the city
centre.
""This is like an urban war zone, everything is on fire,"
said resident Maria Hounda said.
In an effort to avoid the kind of street clashes that marred
the 2001 Group of Eight summit in Genoa, Greece switched the EU
meeting from the port of Thessaloniki to the seaside resort of
Porto Carras, which was more easily sealed off.
With protest groups promising demonstrations against the EU,
NATO and the U.S.-led war in Iraq, Greece had deployed 16,000
troops and police across the scenic coastal region and
Thessaloniki in the country's biggest ever security operation.
CROW BARS
Reuters correspondent Michele Kambas said the anarchists,
most of them wearing ski and gas masks, were "very well
equipped".
"They used crow bars to tear off aluminium sheeting that
many shopkeepers and banks had erected days ago to cover their
premises in expectation of trouble," Kambas said.
The demonstrators were overwhelmingly Greek although there
was a sprinkling from Britain, Germany, Scandinavia and Italy.
"There have been around 60 arrests including some
foreigners," a police official told Reuters.
"A number of bystanders, including several elderly people,
were rushed to hospital with breathing problems," he said.
The police charges drove the attackers into sanctuary in the
city's university, the country's largest. By law police are not
allowed into university grounds.
The violence did not touch the U.S. consulate on the sixth
floor of a shopping mall which had been boarded up earlier in
the week.
On Friday, police fired teargas to disperse anarchists who
threw stones and tried to evade roadblocks a few kilometres from
the site of the EU summit that began on Thursday.
Even the crowds at the Thessaloniki protest were far smaller
than the 100,000 forecast by organisers like the Stop the War
coalition and the Genoa 2001 Initiative.
Greece hands over the rotating six-month EU presidency to
Italy on July 1.
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