Romanies burned from their homes in Italy after girl's false rape claim

A mob of vigilantes burned a Romany community from their homes on Saturday after a teenage girl falsely stated that two Gypsy men had dragged her behind a building and raped her.

Residents of Vallette, a suburb of the northern Italian city of Turin, took to the streets after a 16 year old girl, who had been found crying, told her brother she had been raped by two Gypsy men.

A group of around 50 people is understood to have split off from the mob and headed for a nearby encampment of Romany Gypsies.

The group carried baseball bats, iron bars and flammable materials and reportedly ordered women and children to leave before setting fire to the Romanies' homes and cars. Huts were also set on fire and the camp was completely destroyed.

Riot police were called in as the mob, which was led by relatives of the girl who had made the accusations of rape, chanted "let them burn". Television footage showed Romany people fleeing the camp in tears as all they had went up in flames.

The girl, named only as Eleonora, cried as she admitted to police that she had invented the story after losing her virginity to her boyfriend. Doctors had begun to grow suspicious as her story became confused.

Her brother came to inform the mob that the alleged attack had been made up. He was already too late, and by the end of Saturday the camp had been razed to the ground.

Turin's mayor, Piero Fassino, said that 'it is completely unacceptable that we have these lynch mob protests against people who had nothing at all do with this and who were targeted simply for being foreign.

'It is our duty as citizens to turn people away from this sort of violent intolerance in our city', he added.

Two Italian men, aged 60 and 20, have been arrested on charges of aggravated damage. Police are understood to be looking into possible links between the mob and extreme football hooligans known as "ultras".

Saturday's attack is not the first of its kind in recent years in Italy, where anti-Gypsyism is rife. In 2008 a lynch mob attacked a Romany camp in Naples after a girl said that Gypsies had tried to steal her baby.