ROME, Feb 9 (Reuters) – An anarchist group claimed accountability on Monday for sabotaging rail infrastructure in northern Italy on Saturday and disrupting prepare site visitors on the primary full day of the Winter Olympic Video games.
Police reported three separate episodes at totally different places early on Saturday which brought on delays of as much as 2-1/2 hours for high-speed and regional companies, significantly across the metropolis of Bologna.
Nobody was injured and no trains had been broken.
In an announcement circulated on-line, an anarchist group mentioned a progressive crackdown on demonstrations by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni had made confrontation on the streets “ineffective” and meant they needed to discover different types of protest.
“It due to this fact appears essential to undertake clandestine strategies, decentralise the battle and multiply its fronts, and switch to self-defence and sabotage as a way to survive the instances forward,” the anarchist assertion mentioned.
There was no quick remark from the police on the assertion. Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, who heads the Transport Ministry, vowed to catch the anarchists.
“We are going to do all the pieces to … search out and flush out these thugs wherever they cover, to place them in jail and to confront those that defend them,” he wrote on X. “Lengthy reside the Olympics, image of an Italy that builds, that evokes emotion, that by no means provides up,” he added.
The anarchists denounced the Olympic Video games as a “glorification of nationalism”, saying the occasion supplied a “testing floor” for policing crowds and monitoring motion.
Shortly after Saturday’s assault on rail infrastructure, a small group of round 100 hooded protesters threw flares and fireworks at police after breaking away from the primary physique of an anti-Olympics demonstration in Milan, a co-host of the Video games.
Meloni condemned on Sunday the road protesters and the saboteurs as “enemies of Italy”.
