Milan began deporting Romanians with criminal records, authorities said Saturday, after a wave of violent crime blamed on swelling numbers of immigrants from one of the European Union's newest and poorest members.
Romania warned against xenophobia in Italy after a mob of eight to 10 people wielding knives and metal bars set upon a handful of Romanians in a Rome parking lot Friday night and wounded three of them _ one seriously.
"We should fight against the wave of xenophobia that is manifesting itself in Italy and we must fight against the bad image that Romanians who are working in Italy have," Romanian Prime Minister Calin Popescu Tariceanu said Saturday.
Italian Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema decried the mob attack on the Romanians, "calling it gang aggression unworthy of our country," according to the Italian news agency ANSA.
Milan authorities said that four Romanians with criminal records were put on an Alitalia flight to Bucharest on Friday night, and that expulsions for 12 other Romanians had been authorized.
They were the first reported expulsions since Premier Romano Prodi's center-left government, faced with growing public anger over violent crime blamed on Romanians, approved a decree Wednesday night that empowered authorities to expel European Union citizens who are deemed a danger to public safety.
Of the three Romanians injured in Friday's attack, one was in serious condition with head wounds, said paramilitary Carabinieri police officer Agostino Vitolo.
The head of the Rome-based Association of Romanians in Italy denounced the beating by the mob as a "criminal attack."
"The Romanian community is living through a nightmare," association president Eugen Terteleac said in a telephone interview. He claimed media had created a "climate of uncertainty and alarm," although he said he welcomed the expulsions as long as government power "isn't abused."
A top Milan security official, Prefect Gianvalerio Lombardi, acknowledged that there was a risk that the government's crackdown on immigrants could inspire violence like the mob attack.
"There could be this danger, but it is clear we have to send a very clear message" that crime by immigrants won't be tolerated, Lombardi told Sky TG24 TV.
The savage, fatal beating of an Italian woman, the wife of a top navy commander, near a Gypsy camp on Rome's outskirts earlier this week increased pressure on authorities to crack down on immigrants, especially Romanians who have poured into Italy since the start of the year, when their homeland joined the EU. A young Romanian man who lived in the camp was arrested in connection with the attack.
Romanians, who number some 560,000 in Italy, or roughly 1 percent of Italy's population, lead the statistics for murders, home robberies and sexual violence among crimes by immigrants, officials say. Many Romanians have taken jobs as bricklayers, maids and janitors since Romania and Bulgaria joined the EU.
Romanians have been involved in several sensational crimes this year in a country where street violence is generally rare.
A Roman woman died after being stabbed in the eye with an umbrella wielded by a Romanian woman in Rome's subway. Three Romanians were arrested in the mugging of Oscar-winning director Giuseppe Tornatore in Rome. A man cycling in Rome died in a coma from a beating by suspected Romanian muggers.
In a northern Italy, a young Romanian man was arrested last month as a suspect in the rape of a woman on the steps of a church. In Milan, the 75-year-old owner of a coffee bar in Milan was beaten and her daughter raped behind the counter during a robbery. Four Romanians were arrested in the case.
Romanian Foreign Minister Adrian Cioroianu called the expulsions a gesture to "lessen tensions" in Italy. "Like in any democratic country, Italy has to be sensitive to public opinion," Cioroianu said, insisting that Italian authorities must take measures so that "xenophobic acts" like the mob beating do not happen again.
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Erica Alini and Alessandra Lanzi in Rome contributed to this report.
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