Milan luxury shops close for fear of new unrest as government prepares to deploy troops

By Elisa Anzolin

MILAN, Oct 19 (Reuters) - Italy's government will dispatch 500 army troops to "defend Milan" after two days of unrest that saw demonstrators clash with police, loot shops and vandalise property, Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini said on Monday.

The deployment is expected to be included in a package of security measures to be approved at a cabinet meeting expected on Tuesday.

Shops in central Milan closed early on Monday and boarded up their windows, fearing a fresh outbreak of violence in Italy’s financial capital.

"From words to action: 500 more troops to defend Milan," Salvini, head of the co-ruling right-wing League party, wrote on social media.

Most stores in Milan's Via Montenapoleone luxury shopping district, home to brands including Chanel, Tiffany and Dior, had removed merchandise from their windows as a precaution, while police patrolled the street and a handful of tourists looked on.

Several hundred hooded protesters, many believed to be minors, set bins ablaze and looted shops in the city centre over the weekend after an initially peaceful demonstration on Saturday over poor public services and rising costs.

Among the stores ransacked were sports retailers Decathlon and Arc'teryx and mobile phone operator Vodafone, television footage showed. Stores such as clothing brands Levi's and Under Armour, as well as Decathlon, covered their shop windows with cardboard and wooden panels.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who faces a national election next year, condemned the violence and chaired a meeting with ministers and security chiefs on Monday to discuss the situation.

"The government will respond firmly to these attacks on the state, including through measures aimed at curbing violence by minors," Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, who also serves as deputy prime minister like Salvini, wrote on X.

As part of the planned crackdown, Corriere della Sera newspaper said Meloni was considering extending preventive detention for minors and cracking down on youth gangs, bringing forward some provisions contained in an existing security bill currently being examined by parliament.

Italian police said it had detained 271 young people during unrest in Milan on Sunday. Of those taken to police stations, 32 were arrested, including 23 minors and 13 foreign nationals, police said on Monday. A further 28 people were reported to judicial authorities.

The unrest followed clashes on Saturday in Milan and other northern cities including Bologna, Brescia, Bergamo and Turin, where 28 protesters were arrested, according to a police report released on Sunday.

The disturbances echoed unrest in neighbouring France, where hundreds of thousands of people angered by rising living costs and declining public services took to the streets on Saturday in some of the country's most violent protests in years.

(Writing by Gianluca Semeraro and Giuseppe Fonte, editing by Ros Russell, Crispian Balmer and Nick Zieminski)