Italy: Police injured during migrant revolt

Ragusa, 21 Aug. (AKI) - Two police were hospitalised with minor injuries in southern Italy following a revolt by more than a dozen Tunisian migrants who feared they would be sent home.

The 14 migrants were arrested in the Italian southern region of Sicily after destroying the detention centre in the city of Ragusa where they were held.

The men, who had only arrived by boat to the Sicilian island of Lampedusa a couple of weeks before, were arrested by the police and accused of resistance and violence towards authorities in Ragusa, a city in southwestern Sicilian where the migrant centre was located.

In an attempt to escape the men "destroyed the housing where they were staying and the video-surveillance system, flooded some rooms with fire sprinklers, and destroyed computers and other objects belonging to the police and the civil protection agency ," according to the police.

The men used the glass from the broken windows as weapons and climbed on the roof to throw fire extinguishers, chairs, shoes, light bulbs and anything else they could find against police to stop them. Two policemen were taken to hospital, one was hit in the face by a sharp object and the other by a glass bottle that fractured his cheek bone.

The violence comes after their recent failed escape attempt prior, when they were immediately stopped and returned to the centre.