Neo-Fascists and left-wing students clash in Rome - Four people received hospital treatment on Tuesday after a fight broke out between left-leaning students and supporters of tiny neo-Fascist party Forza Nuova outside Rome's La Sapienza University.
Of the people who required treatment for head injuries, bruising and, in one case, a broken shoulder, two were students and two were Forza Nuova supporters. All four are being questioned by the police.
The students claimed they were attacked by a group of men who arrived in a car and began to beat them with chains and baseball bats as they were putting up anti-Fascist posters around the university.
''There was no argument, just a cold, premeditated attack by militants and activists from Forza Nuova,'' student representatives said.
The Forza Nuova supporters insist that the leftists students attacked them while they were putting up pro-Fascist posters.
''As far as I know, this business about chains is nonsense. We were the ones who were attacked by leftist students, in far greater number than us. Our car was destroyed and we have two people in hospital,'' said Roberto Fiore, the leader of Forza Nuova.
Political tensions at the university have run high since April's elections saw the right sweeping to victory at national and local level.
The university rector on Monday cancelled a conference that was to have been held in the university's literature department about controversial wartime atrocities, when thousands of Italians were killed by Yugoslav Communist guerillas at the end of World War II, their bodies thrown into rock pits called 'foibe'.
''After the cultural arrogance of the left collectives who did not want anyone to talk about the foibe, now they've sunk to physical arrogance towards those who don't agree with their Marxist ideas and who go near the university,'' Fiore claimed.
Rome's right-wing mayor Gianni Alemanno - who has distanced himself from extremists who hailed him as 'Duce' and gave him the Roman fascist salute of Benito Mussolini following his election win - was quick to condemn the incident.
''After so many years of violence by extremists from both the right and left, the university must return to being exclusively a place of culture, for peaceful exchange of ideas and educative growth,'' he said.
''There is no climate of violence in Rome. There are just a lot of dangerous and criminal imbeciles who must be isolated for their violence and xenophobic acts,'' he added.
Tuesday's incident comes on the heels of a neo-Fascist attack in Verona earlier this month when a group of skinheads beat up a 29-year-old man who later died in hospital.
