Behind the burnt caravans, smoking car wreckage, and a scattering of disintegrating foodstuffs is a line of nomads fleeing from what were once their homes. It was a scene which occurred repeatedly around Italy last week as anger and violence towards the gypsy population came to a head.
The attempted kidnapping of a six-month-old Italian girl in Naples by a gypsy woman on May 15 was the spark for the violence, with dozens of attacks on Gypsy camps in the past week.
The attacks have been led mainly by bands of youths wielding Molotov cocktails, rocks, and iron bars. They climb on to their scooters at night and roam the city's outskirts in search of gypsy camps to set on fire.
It is an alarming example of racial brutality in a country that has been struggling to integrate its immigrant population for years.
The government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi initially denounced the attacks as 'unjustified violence against the Rom [gypsies]', but has since done an about-face. In response to public outrage over the kidnapping, the government ordered dozens of police raids that resulted in about 400 arrests of illegal immigrants and 118 expulsions.
The leader of the xenophobic Northern League Party, Umberto Bossi, applauded the actions taken against the illegal immigrants.