ITALY has been plunged into chaos as hooded teens rampage through the streets and smash up shops in Brit holiday hotspots.
Prime Minister has slammed the vandals as “gangs of hooligans” as a wave of violent riots sweeps across Europe.
Vandals smashed windows, set fires and hurled hunks of debris at riot , transforming ‘s central piazza into a battleground.
Terrifying videos show balaclava-clad boys flinging rocks and bottles as riot police charge at makeshift barricades and swing batons at protestors.
What started as a peaceful march of around 5,000 people on Saturday over the high quickly spiralled into fiery chaos and carnage.
Gangs of youths – many of them masked – ransacked properties, looted shops and set rubbish bins on fire.
Terrified tourists fled the usually packed square – overlooked by the gleaming white duomo – to escape the violent rioters.
The mayor of Milan, Giuseppe Sala, said that he had witnessed “smashed shop windows, looted stores, and frightened citizens”.
“What happened here is what we are seeing in many cities around the world,” he told Ansa.
He added: “I’m very worried because it’s a new phenomenon, which also originates from an international scenario and therefore feeds itself.”
Around 70 people have been detained across the weekend of riot hell, according to news outlet Ansa.
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni slammed the vandals as “thugs who exploit demonstrations to spread chaos, attack those who guarantee security, and hold entire cities hostage”.
She thanked police officers for protecting citizens, business owners and workers “who have the right to live in their city without fear and without seeing it ravaged by gangs of hooligans.”
“To demonstrate is a right. To lay our cities to waste is not” she wrote on X.
Police battled the crowds on Sunday by firing water cannons and unleashing tear before charging into the luxury shopping arcade of the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II where some rioters had gathered.
Police said 104 cops were injured in Milan and a total of 72 suspects – many of them minors – had been dragged to the city’s police station.
Damage from the riots is estimated to cost taxpayers around half a million , according to Marco Barbieri, general secretary of the Confcommercio business association.
Violence also broke out in , and Bologna with a total of 197 suspects identified or detained over the clashes.
Rocks and eggs were pelted at police in Turin while firecrackers and small homemade bombs were launched at the education ministry’s HQ in Rome.
Bologna’s railway station was engulfed by vandals with rioters hurling bottles and barricading roads with rubbish bins.
An emergency meeting to discuss the violence has been scheduled for Monday, PM Meloni announced.
Students are clashing with enforcement in unprecedented scenes of violence across Europe.
In France, for ravaging the country by burning down buildings and looting shops with abandon.
More than half a million people took to the streets on Saturday over the cost of living – but the marches again erupted into chaos with one protestor losing his life in the horror riots.
Hundreds of anti-fascist protestors clashed with police in Brussels, on Saturday.
And in Lisbon, Portugal tens of thousands marched against soaring living costs and an escalating .
Protests continued into their sixth day in Albania with furios citizens demanding the resignation of prime minister Edi Rama.
Rama has denied accusations of corruption and said he will remain in post.
