Italian police fired tear gas and water cannons Saturday inRome as violent protesters turned a demonstration against corporate greed intoa riot, smashing shop and bank windows, torching cars and hurling bottles.The protest in the Italian capital, which left dozensinjured, was part of the "Occupy Wall Street" demonstrations againstcapitalism and austerity measures that went global Saturday.
Tens of thousands nicknamed "the indignant"marched in major cities across Europe, as protests that began in New Yorklinked up with long-running demonstrations against government cost-cutting andfailed financial policies in Europe.
Heavy smoke billowed into the air in downtown Rome as asmall group broke away from the main demonstration and wreaked havoc in streetsclose to the Colosseum.
Clad in black with their faces covered, protesters threwrocks, bottles and incendiary devices at banks and Rome police in riot gear.Some protesters had clubs, others had hammers. They destroyed bank ATMs, settrash bins on fire and assaulted at least two news crews from Sky Italia.
TV footage showed police in riot gear charging theprotesters and firing water cannons at them. Several police forces andprotesters were injured, including one man trying to stop the protesters fromthrowing bottles. TV footage showed a young woman with blood covering her face,while the ANSA news agency said one man had lost two fingers when a firecrackerexploded.
In the city's St. John in Lateran square, police vans cameunder attack, with protesters hurling rocks and cobblestones and smashing thevehicles. One police van was set ablaze, but the two people inside were able toabandon the vehicle. Peaceful demonstrators who could not leave the squareclimbed up the staircase outside the Basilica, one of the oldest in Rome.
Rome Mayor Gianni Alemanno blamed the violence on "afew thousand thugs from all over Italy, and possibly from all overEurope." He said some Rome museums were forced to close down because ofthe violence.
Some protesters also trashed offices of the Defense Ministryand set them on fire, causing the roof to collapse, reports said.
Police were out in force as up to 100,000 protesters hadbeen expected a day after Premier Silvio Berlusconi barely survived aconfidence vote in Parliament. Italy, which has a national debt ratio secondonly to Greece in the 17-nation eurozone, is rapidly becoming a focus ofconcern in Europe's debt crisis.
"People of Europe: Rise Up!" read one banner inRome. Some peaceful demonstrators turned against the violent group and tried tostop them, hurling bottles, Sky Italia and ANSA said. Others fled, scared bythe raw violence.
ANSA said four people from an anarchist group were arrestedearly Saturday morning, with police seizing helmets, anti-gas masks, clubs andhundreds of bottles from their car.
Elsewhere, bright autumn sunshine and a social mediacampaign brought out thousands across Europe.
In Frankfurt, continental Europe's financial hub, some 5,000people protested at the European Central Bank, and some were setting up a tentcamp aiming at permanently occupying the green space in front of the ECBbuilding.
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange spoke to about 500demonstrators outside St. Paul's cathedral in London, calling the internationalbanking system a "recipient of corrupt money."
U.K. police contained most London demonstrators in thestreets around the cathedral, near the city's financial district. Protesterserected tents and asked supporters to bring them blankets, food and water asthey settled down for the evening.
Several hundreds more marched in the German cities ofBerlin, Cologne and Munich and the Austrian capital of Vienna, while protestersin Zurich, Switzerland's financial hub, carried banners reading "We won'tbail you out yet again" and "We are the 99 percent."
In Brussels, thousands of marched through the downtown areachanting "Criminal bankers caused this crisis!" They pelted the stockexchange building with old shoes then marched on to the European Union sector.
Protesters also accused NATO, which has its headquarters inBrussels, of wasting taxpayer money on the wars in Libya and Afghanistan,saying that one European soldier deployed to Afghanistan costs the equivalentof 11 high school teachers.
In Helsinki, around 300 activists held a peaceful, creativerally with homemade signs and stalls full of art and food.
In Spain, the Indignant Movement established the firstaround-the-clock "occupation" protest camps in cities and townsacross the country beginning in May and lasting for weeks. Six marches wereconverging Saturday on Madrid's Puerta del Sol plaza just before dusk.
Portuguese angry at their government's handling of theeconomic crisis were protesting in downtown Lisbon later. Portugal is one ofthree European nations — the others being Greece and Ireland — that havealready needed an international bailout.
Across the Atlantic, hundreds gathered in Toronto'sfinancial district, converging close to the Toronto Stock Exchange and theheadquarters major Canadian banks to decry what they called government-abettedcorporate greed. Protests were also being held in Montreal and Vancouver.
In New York, protesters marched on a Chase bank to protestthe role banks played in the financial crisis, and demonstrations wereculminating in an "Occupation Party" in Times Square.
Support for the anti-capitalist protest movement was lightin Asia, where the global economy is booming. In Sydney, around 300 peopleturned out, while another 200 people in Tokyo chanted anti-nuclear slogansoutside the Tokyo Electric Power Co., which operates the tsunami-hit FukushimaDai-ichi nuclear plant.
In the Philippines, some 100 people marched on the U.S.Embassy in Manila to support the Occupy Wall Street protests.