Rome (AFP) - Police fired tear gas and made a number of arrests in Rome on Saturday as an anti-government protest turned violent, leaving several injured, according to medics and an AFP photographer.

Hooded protesters hurled rocks and firecrackers at police, causing some 20 injuries to officers, according to authorities.

One protester was seriously hurt -- losing a number of fingers -- after a firecracker apparently exploded prematurely in his hand.

According to the interior ministry, six people were taken into custody.

Protest organisers said 15,000 people had taken part in the rally but police could not confirm that number.

The demonstration -- made up of workers, students, and anti-austerity campaigners -- started peacefully but turned violent when the group reached the Ministry for Industry in the city centre.

Flag-waving protesters shouted slogans against government employment reform plans, and carried banners reading "housing, income, dignity", and "you can call us NEET", the English acronym for people not in education, employment, or training.

"Our situation is precarious, and we are angry", one banner read.

Protesters threw eggs and oranges at government buildings before turning on police, while officers tried to disperse the crowd by surging towards the group and blasting them with tear gas, leaving many protesters fleeing down side streets.

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, who came to power in February, has put forward an ambitious economic reform programme which will see public spending reduced by 4.5 billion euros ($6.2 billion).

With the country's unemployment rate reaching a record 13 percent in February, he says reforms are a "precondition for economic recovery".

He said last week that changes were needed because in Italy "there are those who have taken much, too much over the years, and it is time they give some back".


Protest in Rome turns violent

Dozens of people are hurt as police fire tear gas and make arrests during an anti-government demonstration.
'We are angry'

BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian government media and rebel forces said Saturday that poison gas had been used in a central village, blaming each other for an attack that reportedly injured scores of people.

Details of the attack Friday in Kfar Zeita, a village in Hama province some 200 kilometers (125 miles) north of Damascus, remained sketchy Saturday night.

But online videos posted by rebel activists showed pale-faced men, women and children gasping for breath at a field hospital, suggesting an affliction by some kind of poison in a conflict that's seen hundreds killed by chemical weapons.

The main Western-backed opposition group, the Syrian National Coalition, said the poison gas attack hurt dozens of people, though it did not identify the gas used.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an activist group that relies on a network of on-the-ground volunteers, said the gas attack happened during air raids that left heavy smoke over the area. It reported that people suffered from suffocation and breathing problems after the attack, but gave no further details.

State-run Syrian television blamed members of the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front rebel group for using what it described as chlorine gas in an attack it said killed two people and injuring more than 100. The TV report claimed the Nusra Front is preparing for another chemical attack against the Wadi Deif area in the northern province of Idlib, as well as another area in Hama. The government station did not explain how it knew the Nusra Front's plans.

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In this Friday, April 11, 2014 image made from amateur video, provided by Shams News Network, a loos …

Activists in the village could not be reached Saturday.

An activist from Hama who is currently in Turkey and is in contact with residents told The Associated Press that the attack occurred around sunset Friday. The man, who goes with the name Amir al-Basha, said the air raids on the rebel-held village came as nearby areas including Morek and Khan Sheikhoun have witnessed intense clashes between troops and opposition fighters.

An amateur video posted online by opposition activists showed a hospital room in Kfar Zeita that was packed with men and children, some of whom breathing through oxygen masks. On one bed, the video showed six children, some appearing to have difficulty breathing while others cried.

The video appeared genuine and corresponded to other AP reporting of the attack.

Chemical weapons have been used before in Syria's 3-year-old conflict, a war which activists say has killed more than 150,000 people. In August, a chemical attack near the capital, Damascus, killed hundreds of people. The U.S. and its allies blamed the Syrian government for that attack, which nearly sparked Western airstrikes against President Bashar Assad's forces. Damascus denied the charges and blamed rebels of staging the incident.

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In this Friday, April 11, 2014 image made from amateur video, provided by Shams News Network, a loos …

Before the August attack, there have been several incidents of toxic gases being used. Britain, France and the U.S. have spoken about chemical weapons use in the central city of Homs, Damascus and elsewhere.

A United Nations weapons inspectors' report released in December identified four locations where chemical weapons likely had been used in 2013: Khan al Assal outside Aleppo, Jobar in Damascus' eastern suburbs, Saraqueb near Idlib in the northwest and Ashrafiah Sahnaya in the Damascus countryside. In two cases, inspectors reportedly found "signatures of sarin," a nerve agent.

The Syrian National Coalition called on the U.N. to conduct a "quick investigation into the developments related to the use of poisonous gas against civilians in Syria." The coalition also claimed that another chemical weapons attack Friday struck the Damascus suburb of Harasta, though state media did not report on it.

The chemical weapons attack in August caused an international outcry. A coalition formed to eliminate the weapons and now aims to remove and destroy 1,300 metric tons of chemicals held by the Assad government by June 30. Syria's government missed a Dec. 31 deadline to remove the most dangerous chemicals in its stockpile and a Feb. 5 deadline to give up its entire stockpile of chemical weapons. Assad's government cited security concerns and the lack of some equipment but has repeated that it remains fully committed to the process.

Meanwhile, violence continued Saturday elsewhere in Syria. In the northern city of Aleppo, Syria's largest and one-time commercial center, the Observatory and state television reported intense clashes, mostly near a main intelligence office in the city's contested neighborhood of Zahra.

Syrian state news agency SANA reported earlier Saturday that several mortar shells hit the government-held neighborhoods of Hamidiyeh and Khaldiyeh, killing at least six people and wounding 15.

Aleppo became a key front in the country's civil war after rebels launched an offensive there in July 2012.

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Follow Bassem Mroue on Twitter at www.twitter.com/bmroue .


Poison gas attack reported in Syria

Government media and rebel forces both say chemical weapons were used in a village in the Hama province.
Unclear who to blame

Boda (Central African Republic) (AFP) - Stifled by the heat inside a barn in the Central African Republic town of Boda, dozens of emaciated and often sick displaced people subsist in fear of the vigilantes who surround them.

The group, members of an extended family, fled to Boda from the village of Danga 25 kilometres (15 miles) away, seeking shelter from the anti-balaka -- or "anti-machete", mainly-Christian militia groups that have been hunting and killing members of the crisis-torn country's Muslim minority.

But days after the family arrived in Boda, fierce clashes broke out between the anti-balaka and local Muslims, ending with the Christian militia forces encircling the southwestern diamond-mining town.

More than 14,000 Muslims, including the displaced family from Danga, are now trapped inside with no way out and very limited supplies.

"I am suffering very much. No house, no food. The anti-balaka are killing people -- many," said Saifou, one of those sheltering in the suffocating barn.

"I have lost many things, even my cattle. I had 800 of them," said Saifou -- who, like some 200 other displaced people stuck in the town, is from the Fula ethnic group, a predominantly Muslim, herding people whose members are scattered across west and central Africa.

Boda began its bloody downward spiral at the end of January, after coup leader-turned-president Michel Djotodia gave up power under international pressure.

Djotodia was accused of letting ex-fighters from Seleka, the mainly Muslim rebel coalition that swept him to power 10 months earlier, wage a campaign of atrocities against the Christian majority.

Seleka fighters abandoned Boda after Djotodia stepped down, and horrific fighting broke out between people of both faiths. More than 100 people were killed in a week.

The bloodshed -- which typifies the terrifying plunge into ethno-religious violence that has swept the country -- was halted by the arrival of French peacekeeping troops.

- No milk for baby -

Since then, however, anti-balaka forces have laid siege to the town, once called "Boda the Beautiful" for its majestic, centuries-old trees.

A woman in the barn who was nursing a malnourished baby lifted up her shirt and squeezed her breast to show that she had no milk for her infant.

Her mother, Khadidja Labi, lay immobile on a mat, already looking like death.

Labi was unsuccessful in signing on for the scarce food handed out each morning by staff of the UN World Food Programme (WFP). The last distribution was four weeks ago, time enough to weaken the family and make them more susceptible to diarrhoea and less resistant to diseases such as scabies and malaria.

The most feeble have died. Yet those who could still stand on trembling legs proved ready to stumble forward and greet visitors.

Karim, clad in a brightly coloured shirt, came back from the food handout disgruntled.

"The WFP isn't giving us sugar, no honey, no firewood, just rice and maize," he said.

"The Christians wanted to kill us in order to take away our property. We can't even go the mosque in our district," added Karim, who was born in Boda and had wanted "to stay here".

He vented the anger felt by Boda's Muslims over businesses that had been looted and destroyed around the town centre, which is crossed by a single long road of red earth, lined by small stalls with virtually nothing to sell. The road is the only territory still open to the Muslims, all gathered into a single district.

Frightened inhabitants can no longer cross three small wooden bridges that traverse the filthy waters of a canal because death is all but certain on the far side. The bridges today lead to a no-man's land of burned-out houses owned by Muslims and Christians alike.

- 'Muslims showed wicked side' -

Facing the main road and watching over the no-man's land with machine-guns, about 100 soldiers from France's 2,000-strong peacekeeping force guard the frontier between communities. Three armoured cars are posted on the square in front of the town hall.

To the right of it, a battered old road rises up to the church and Christian districts, which have become home to 9,000 displaced people. Here, a small market remains, along with street kitchens and the sound of music. The mood is less desperate than in Muslim territory and meat, vegetables and fruit are available.

"We want the Muslims to go, since they have shown us their wicked side," said Miguez Wilikondi, a youth leader who has taken charge of the displaced people.

Wilikondi said the Christians had been saved from Muslim militias by anti-balaka forces.

"Thanks to them, we're still alive," he said.

Back in the Muslim enclave, Mahamat, a diamond miner who converted from Christianity to Islam and has 13 children, tried to find room for hope.

"Fortunately we have a well of pure water, otherwise we would be dead," he said.

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SLOVYANSK, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian special forces have been sent to an eastern city where armed pro-Russia men seized a police headquarters and the Security Service office a day earlier, the interior minister said Sunday.

The unrest in Slovyansk and the nearby major industrial city Donetsk were the latest shows of spiraling anger in eastern Ukraine, which has a large Russian-speaking population and was also the support base for Viktor Yanukovych, the Ukrainian president ousted in February following months of protests in Kiev, the capital. Ethnic Russians in Ukraine's east widely fear that the new pro-Western Ukrainian government will suppress them.

Arsen Avakov wrote on his Facebook page that the men who seized the buildings in Slovyansk had opened fire on the approaching troops and described the unrest as "Russian aggression." Avakov called on local residents to remain calm and stay at home.

An Associated Press reporter saw no signs of any shots fired at the police station which was surrounded by a reinforced line of barricades. Unlike on Saturday, the men patrolling the barricades were largely unarmed. One of the guards who asked not to be identified denied reports of fighting at the police station.

Armed camouflaged men were guarding a checkpoint at the main entrance into the city, not allowing anyone to enter. The claims of gunfire inside Slovyansk couldn't be immediately verified, and.

In a phone call with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry "expressed strong concern" that the attacks "were orchestrated and synchronized, similar to previous attacks in eastern Ukraine and Crimea," according the State Department. Kerry "made clear that if Russia didn't take steps to de-escalate in eastern Ukraine and move its troops back from Ukraine's border, there would be additional consequences," the department said.

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A man warms himself at a fire next to barricades in front of an entrance of the Ukrainian regional o …

The Russian Foreign Ministry debunked Kerry's claims while Lavrov blamed the crisis in Ukraine on the failure of the Ukrainian government "to take into account the legitimate needs and interests of the Russian and Russian-speaking population," the ministry said. Lavrov also warned that Russia may pull out of next week's Ukraine summit if Kiev uses force against "residents of the southeast who were driven to despair."

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, who is in Ukraine this weekend, condemned the unrest in a Twitter post as "a coordinated armed action to seize control over key parts of Eastern Ukraine" which "would not have happened without Russia."

In Slovyansk, the mayor said Saturday the men who seized the police station were demanding a referendum on autonomy and possible annexation by Russia. Protesters in other eastern cities have made similar demands after a referendum in Crimea last month in which voters opted to split off from Ukraine, leading to annexation by Russia.

The interior minister overnight reported an attack on a police in the nearby city of Kramatorsk. A video from local news web-site Kramatorsk.info showed a group of camouflaged men armed with automatic weapons storming the building. The news web-site also reported that supporters of the separatist Donetsk People's Republic have occupied the administration building, built a barricade with tires around it and put a Russian flag nearby.

Regional news website OstroV said three key administrative buildings have been seized in another city in the area, Enakiyeve.

In the regional capital Donetsk on Saturday, witnesses said the men who entered the police building were wearing the uniforms of the Berkut, the feared riot police squad that was disbanded in February after Yanukovych's ouster. Berkut officers' violent dispersal of a demonstration in Kiev in November set off the mass protests that culminated in bloodshed in February when more than 100 people died in sniper fire. The acting government says the snipers were police.

It wasn't immediately clear if the men who occupied the Donetsk police building had made any demands, but the Donetsk police chief said on national television that he was forced to offer his resignation.

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Nataliya Vasilyeva in Kiev and Lynn Berry in Moscow contributed to this report.

As an "anti-terrorist operation" launches in eastern Ukraine, pro-Russian gunmen fire on troops, an official claims.
Buildings under siege

BERLIN (AP) — The U.N.'s expert panel on climate change on Sunday highlighted the disconnect between international goals to fight global warming and what is being done to attain them.

Emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases must drop by 40-70 percent by 2050 to keep the global temperature rise below the 2-degree C (3.6-degree F) cap set in U.N. climate talks, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said.

The opposite is happening now. On average global emissions rose by 2.2 percent — or 1 gigaton — a year between 2000 and 2010, outpacing growth in previous decades to reach "unprecedented levels" despite some efforts to contain them, the IPCC said.

"There is a clear message from science: To avoid dangerous interference with the climate system, we need to move away from business as usual," said Ottmar Edenhofer, one of three co-chairs of the IPCC working group looking at ways to fight climate change.

The panel didn't get into who should do what in the 33-page summary meant to serve as a scientific guide to governments negotiating a new climate agreement, which is supposed to be adopted next year.

Leaked drafts of that document showed the biggest reason for the rising emissions is the higher energy needs resulting from population growth and expanding economies in the developing world, mainly in China and other large countries. However, diagrams that illustrated that were deleted by governments in the final version that was adopted at a weeklong IPCC session in Berlin.

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Activists of the international environmentalist organization Greenpeace pose with posters in front o …

"The problem for the governments was that they felt that these different perspectives can cause harm for them because they can be made at different scales responsible for the emissions," Edenhofer told The Associated Press.

The graphics divided the world into four categories — low, lower-middle, upper-middle and high income countries. Participants in the closed-door session said many developing countries objected to using such income categories.

In U.N. climate negotiations only two categories are used — developed and developing countries. The former want to scrap that firewall, saying China and other fast-growing economies can't be compared to the least developed nations and must face stricter emissions cuts, while most developing countries want to keep it. It's a major sticking point in the U.N. talks, and it spilled over into the IPCC session, participants said.

Diego Pacheco, the head of Bolivia's delegation in Berlin, said developing countries worried that graphs with four income groups in the authoritative IPCC document would open the door for industrialized countries — whom they see as historically responsible for climate change — to reframe the discussion on how to share the burden of climate action.

"This is the first step for developed countries of avoiding responsibilities and saying all countries have to assume the responsibility for climate change," he told the AP.

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Rejendra K. Pachauri, Chairman of the IPCC, from left, poses prior to a press conference as part of …

Counting all emissions since the industrialized revolution in the 18th century, the U.S. is the top carbon polluter. China's current emissions are greater than those of the U.S. and rising quickly. China's historical emissions are expected to overtake those of the U.S. in the next decade.

There is plenty of material analyzing emissions from those and other perspectives in a larger scientific report that the IPCC will release this week, but it was kept out of the summary for policy-makers.

Oswaldo Lucon, a Brazilian scientist involved in the report, regretted that the diagrams were taken out, saying they are relevant to the "big picture." He said China, India, Brazil and Saudi Arabia were among the countries opposing using them in the summary.

Underlying the arguments "was a whole history of discussions on who was going to foot the bill of environmental damage," Lucon said.

Another IPCC report, released last month, warned that flooding, droughts and other climate impacts could have devastating effects on economies, agriculture and human health, particularly in developing countries.

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Ottmar Edenhofer, Co-Chairman of the IPCC Working Group III, and Rejendra K. Pachauri, Chairman of t …

Global temperatures have already risen about 0.8 C since record-keeping started in the 19th century. The IPCC said the goal of keeping the warming below 2 C by 2100 would require a significant shift in the energy system, away from oil and coal, which generate the highest emissions. That would mean a near-quadrupling of energy from zero- or low-carbon sources such as solar and wind power.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called it a global economic opportunity.

"So many of the technologies that will help us fight climate change are far cheaper, more readily available, and better performing than they were when the last IPCC assessment was released less than a decade ago," Kerry said Sunday.

Turning to the costs of that transition, IPCC projected that it would reduce consumption growth only by about 0.06 percentage points per year, adding that that didn't take into account the economic benefits of reduced climate change.

"The cost is not something that's going to bring about a major disruption of economic systems. It's well within our reach," IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri told AP. Delaying climate action would make it more costly, he added.

Deepening divide over climate changePlay Video

Current pledges by governments in U.N. climate talks to reduce or curb emissions by 2020 are setting the world on a path of 3 degrees C (5.4 F) of warming, the IPCC said. U.N. climate chief Christiana Figueres, who is leading those talks, urged countries to raise their collective ambition.

"The only safe path forward is to arrive at a carbon neutral world in the second half of this century," Figueres said.

To meet the 2-degree target the world may have deploy new technologies to suck CO2 out of the air, the IPCC said. The most advanced right now is so-called bioenergy with carbon capture and storage. That means growing crops that absorb CO2, then burning them for energy, while capturing the CO2 emissions. The CO2 is then stored deep underground, resulting in a net removal of CO2 from the atmosphere.

"We have the technologies," said U.S. scientist Leon Clark, one of the authors of the report. "But we really have no sense of what it would take to deploy them at scale."

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Karl Ritter can be reached at www.twitter.com/karl_ritter

U.N. climate panel highlights disconnect

A 33-page global warming report has been a source of contention among various nations.
Avoids blame