Black smoke and tear gas billowed over the Italian port of Genoa yesterday as anti-globalization activists protested against a rich countries' summit starting up behind barriers of reinforced fencing and riot police.
Thousands of protesters with banners reading "Zero Debt" and "People Not Profits" lobbed petrol bombs, broke shop windows and torched cars and garbage dumpsters outside a "red zone" cordon built around central Genoa to defend Group of Seven leaders.
Police phalanxes fired tear gas and water cannon to disperse the crowds, but hooded protesters defied them and tried to tear down the fence. Three policemen and one journalist were hurt in clashes and five protesters were detained.
About 200 hard-core protesters threw a petrol bomb into a local prison after breaking its windows. Flames poured out of a ground-floor window, but demonstrators left the area after prison guards appeared on the wall above the street.
Some protests were as close as 300m from the Renaissance Ducal Palace where a beaming Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi earlier greeted arriving leaders for a sumptuous lunch before the summit opened.
The leaders of the US, Japan, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Canada were due to spend most of yesterday discussing a gloomy world economy but were not expected to heed protesters' calls to slash Third World debt or come up with a coordinated plan to reignite economic growth at home.
Both veteran "drop the debt" campaigner Bob Geldof and US President George W. Bush hit out at the violent scenes that have now become routine at international summits.
"I just don't think that violence will achieve anything. The debt campaigners have never been violent, and they have achieved a lot," said the former Irish rock star who organized the 1985 "Live Aid" rock concert to provide famine relief in Ethiopia.
Before leaving London for Genoa yesterday, Bush said the new round of world trade talks he championed would do more to fight Third World poverty than anti-globalization protests would.
"There are some who will try to disrupt the meetings claiming they represent the poor," he said. "To those folks I say, instead of embracing policies that represent the poor, you embrace policies that lock poor people into poverty."
Overnight, Italian authorities had reinforced the daunting security cordon that has turned the heart of Genoa into a virtual ghost town open only to G8 delegations, about 20,000 police and soldiers, 4,000 journalists and wary residents.
The G7 session was due to shift into a Group of Eight summit at 5pm with the arrival of Russian President Vladimir Putin. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan was due to join them to launch a global AIDS and health fund.
In the evening, African leaders and heads of the World Bank and WTO were to join them -- part of an effort to respond to critics who accuse the G8 of being a rich men's club that ignores the world's poor.
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