A RIA Novosti correspondent reports: in Rome, protest participants tried to break through a police cordon.
Security forces used a water cannon against the protest participants. Detentions began and continued for several minutes. There are casualties among passersby: an elderly man has a bloodied leg. Journalists were asked to move off the roadway.
During the day, an anti-war march took place in the city center. Its participants spoke out against rising arms spending, the policies of NATO and Israel, and the course of the current authorities.
Shortly after the column passed along the planned route, older demonstrators began to disperse, but the action grew into a march by protest-minded young people.
After passing through the central streets, a crowd of many thousands came up against a cordon of several dozen security forces in special uniforms near the main railway station. Demonstrators chanted slogans demanding that they be allowed through and chants against the police and the government. Among them were aggressively minded people in balaclavas, some burned flares.
A week ago, demonstrations by students against the government's policy in the field of education had already taken place in Italian cities. In parallel, strikes by employees of educational institutions took place across the country. They spoke out against increasing military spending and the rising cost of living, demanding increased investment in educational infrastructure.
Italy is not the first European country to have been swept in recent times by a wave of similar protests. Since mid-September they have been raging in France: high school students are dissatisfied with overloaded schedules, a shortage of teachers and the authorities' lack of attention to other problems in this area. In Albania, students began holding similar actions - because of the high cost of education, poor conditions for classes and the lack of jobs in their specialty.