Friday, 20 July, 2001, 15:17 GMT 16:17 UK

In pictures: Mayhem in Genoa

Police and anti-globalisation protesters have fought running battles in the streets of the historic Italian port city of Genoa.

The protesters were targeting the Group of Eight (G8) summit, a meeting of the world's richest nations.

Friday July 20 3:39 PM ET

Protester Shot Dead in Anti-G8 Rioting
By Dylan Martinez

GENOA (Reuters) - An anti-globalization protester died after being shot in the head on Friday by an Italian paramilitary trooper while a big power summit was under way in Genoa, witnesses said.

A Reuters photographer saw a group of demonstrators attack a Carabinieri jeep with stones and metal bars, breaking its windows.

A protester prepared to throw a fire extinguisher at the vehicle's shattered rear window, then was hit by two gunshots from the jeep.

The demonstrator fell to the ground and was run over by the jeep that backed over him, the photographer said.

The man, dressed in a white tee-shirt, blue jeans and a black balaclava, lay in the street, blood pouring from his head.

A police spokesman in Genoa confirmed that the unidentified man had died but did not provide any details.

A medic who had been following thousands of protesters rampaging through Genoa during the day described the incident in Piazza Alimonda, about 1.2 miles from the Renaissance palace where Group of Eight leaders were meeting.

``He was hit twice, once in the forehead and once on the left cheek,'' Valeria Valerio, a medic with the anti-globalization Genoa Social Forum, told Reuters.

``He had blood pouring from his mouth.''

After an ambulance took the body away, police withdrew, firing tear gas at a group of about 30 protesters who threw stones at them and shouted, ``Assassins!''

Genoa's mayor Giuseppe Pericu said that although the dead man had no documents on him, he appeared to be Italian.

DAY OF RIOTING

It was the most violent incident in a day of rioting in the Mediterranean port hosting the Group of Eight annual summit, and believed to be the first death in a series of riots over the past two years at such international gatherings.

Protesters torched cars and smashed shop windows and riot police fired tear gas and water cannon during hours of rioting that erupted on the opening day of the summit.

Police said that in running battles with protesters a total of 184 people were injured -- 114 demonstrators, 60 members of the security forces and 10 journalists.

Police detained some 70 anti-globalization demonstrators in running clashes that broke out as Group of Eight leaders gathered in the Mediterranean city around mid-day.

Earlier, masked protesters threw flares at police, shattered shop windows, set fire to dozens of garbage dumpsters and overturned cars and trucks, sending thick smoke billowing over the city for hours.

Police fired tear gas and water cannon in a string of clashes with some of the tens of thousands of protesters around a high-security ``red zone'' protected by 20,000 security forces.

At one point a group of 200 hard-core protesters besieged a local prison, shattering the windows and throwing a petrol bomb inside. Smoke billowed out, but the demonstrators left the area after prison guards appeared on the wall above the street.

PROTESTERS PIERCE ``RED ZONE''

Genoa had been bracing for weeks against the kind of violent anti-globalization protests that have disrupted nearly every major international meeting for the past two years.

Surface-to-air missiles were placed at the city's airport to guard against any possible air attack and authorities threw up 20-foot barricades around the red zone to stop demonstrators from getting near the leaders.

Live television showed protesters beating on the barricades with their hands and water bottles and being hosed by water cannon some 300 yards from the palace where leaders were lunching.

A handful of protesters broke through the barriers, entering the red zone, but were quickly detained by police. Television showed police hitting and kicking a detained protester.

Residents of one apartment block, fearing their building could catch fire, dumped buckets of water on a flaming dumpster.

Local television showed a series of shattered store fronts and a smashed cash machine outside a bank.

The marchers, united in opposition to the G8, represented a range of causes. Some carried banners saying ``People, Not Profit.''

In one square, anarchists fought protesters from one of the numerous peaceful groups that had descended on Genoa. Some 2,000 anarchists tried to enter the headquarters of the Genoa Social Forum (GSF), an umbrella group for more than 700 anti-G8 organizations, a GSF leader said.

``We are here but there are no police and we are shut up inside,'' GSF member Carlo Schenone told Reuters.