Italian protests block arms trains

Italian protests block arms trains

Protesters have vowed to slow down "trains of death"

Anti-war protesters in Italy have been stepping up their campaign to disrupt convoys of arms and munitions bound for Camp Darby, the main US base in Italy.

A group of demonstrators forced a train to halt shortly after it left a northern military base on Monday.

The government has vowed zero tolerance and called in police reinforcements after sit-ins, bonfires and disruption over the weekend.

Officials said later on Monday that trains had resumed their journeys accompanied by police escorts to ward off the protesters despite the disruptions.

But the protesters have said they will also target Italy's ports and airports.

The protests come days after Greenpeace activists tried to block a cargo ship taking US military equipment to the Gulf.

At least 20 members of the environmental group were arrested on Thursday as they tried to board the MVAS Progress after being pounded with water cannon by Dutch police.

Twelve-hour odyssey

A loose grouping of pacifists, anti-globalisation activists and radical trade unions is disrupting the transport of arms and munitions from military bases in northern Italy to the main US installation, Camp Darby, in Tuscany.

Over the weekend, they lit bonfires on rail lines, and staged noisy sit-ins and protests to halt the passage of what they call the trains of death.

One train trip that should have taken just a few hours turned into a 12-hour odyssey as the convoy was halted, re-routed and re-routed again.

Trains are heavily guarded

The BBC's Frances Kennedy says that the demonstrators, who were armed with mobile phones and information on the rail network, managed to stay one step ahead of the police.

"We must block the trains of death, and if we pull the emergency brakes on rail lines involved we'll slow them down long enough to give protesters time to occupy the rails and block stations," Italian media quoted protest leader Luca Casarini as saying.

Pier Ferdinando Casini, speaker of the lower house of the Italian parliament, said that illegal acts could not be justified.

Dock pickets

But the activists held up another two trains on Monday, and say they will extend their action to ports and airports.

Dockside workers in Livorno, from where US military material would depart, are threatening pickets like those during the Vietnam War.

It was reported that more than 20 convoys of military hardware were to be despatched by rail to Camp Darby over the next week.

However, the Italian commander at the camp says that the bulk of the material has already arrived.