6 police officers injured in Italy rail protest

Six police officers were injured overnight in clashes with some 200 protesters around the building site for a new high-speed railway in northwest Italy, Italian news agency ANSA reported on Friday. Wearing helmets and masks, the environmentalist protesters threw stones, smoke bombs and metal balls at police, who fired back with water cannons and tear gas near the village of Maddalena di Chiomonte in the Alpine region of Val di Susa. Part of a nearby motorway was temporarily closed to traffic during the night and police raided a dozen homes in the morning. Hundreds of people were injured this month in clashes at the site over a high-speed line that would connect Lyon and Turin. The line means the journey between Paris and Milan would take just four hours instead of seven hours at the moment.