Xenophobia: The camp blazes after baby kidnap allegations against a Roma girl Italian police arrested hundreds of suspected illegal immigrants today in a sign of the new right-wing government's determination to clamp down.
Some of those held in the operation, which stretched from northern Italy to the Campania region around Naples, were ordered to be immediately expelled.
It comes as illegal Roma camps in Naples had to be evacuated by police after local people, angry at an alleged baby-snatching incident involving a 17-year-old Roma girl, set fire to their shacks repeatedly during the night.
The police action and the arson attack both follow Silvio Berlusconi's return to power as prime minister last week on a promise to get tough on illegal immigrants, who are blamed by many Italians for crime.
Mr Berlusconi's government is preparing new laws to screen immigrants.
In Rome, the police raided at least one makeshift camp of Roma people from Eastern Europe, who bear the brunt of widespread public concern about immigrant crime.
Television showed police loading some Roma men onto buses in Rome's biggest settlement for people known in Italy as "nomads".
Romania, a fellow EU member which has Europe's biggest Roma population, has warned Italy against an outbreak of xenophobia against its people.
Despite the arson attack on the Roma camp outside Naples - in which no one was injured - Mr Berlusconi's government reassured Bucharest that Romanians were not being targeted.
Italy's new interior minister, Roberto Maroni from the anti-immigrant Northern League party, is rushing out emergency legislation that could bring back passport checks on Italy's European Union borders, despite its membership of the Schengen passport-free zone.
He also wants to make illegal immigration a jailable offense and speed up the deportation process.
Police block Naples locals from entering the evacuated Roma camp
Poster Comment:
Screw 'xenophobia'. Crimmigrants suck...