English Fans, Italians Clash on Sardinia

English soccer fans and Italian youths fought with rocks and bottles in two separate incidents overnight as World Cup tension remained high in Sardinia, police said today.

Carabinieri paramilitary police said officers moved in to separate groups of English and Italian youths in the coastal resorts of Santa Margherita and Villasimius, near Cagliari.

Twenty-two English fans were also expelled from Italy today.

Police said the worst overnight incident was at Santa Margherita near the training camp of the English soccer squad, where groups of English fans and Cagliari youths pelted each other with stones and bottles. Several cars were damaged.

The Carabinieri said they detained 10 people and then released them. Two Sardinians and an Englishman were charged with malicious damage, they said.

At Villasimius, scene of a previous clash between English and Sardinians, the Carabinieri also stopped a bottle and rock fight. No one was detained.

Tension has been high in the Cagliari area since England’s notorious fans began arriving to watch their team in the World Cup, with frequent outbreaks of violence.

The ugliest incident was before the England-Netherlands game Saturday when riot police made baton charges against hundreds of rock-throwing fans.

Courts on the island have handed down suspended sentences against 23 English hooligans, three more have been jailed and 20 others are awaiting trial.

British officials in Cagliari said 14 English hooligans handed short suspended sentences by a court Monday for fighting police were deported today.

They were involved in a June 8 clash between drunken, bottle-throwing supporters and riot police, the first serious street violence of the World Cup.

Another eight were deported after being convicted of brawling and malicious damage at Alghero on the northwest Sardinian coast. Three of them were also convicted of resisting arrest.