Rubbish on the streets of Naples: local landfills are full

Protesters on the Mediterranean islands of Sardinia and Sicily are challenging the Italian government's attempts to transport to their islands rubbish from Naples. The streets of Naples are stinking, piled with thousands of tonnes of rotting rubbish. This report from David Willey:

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Up to two hundred thousand tons of stinking household trash is being bulldozed by the army and loaded onto cargo ships and freight trains to destinations in various parts of Italy. Local landfills around Naples are all full.

In Sicily and Sardinia several protesters have been injured in scuffles with the police after ships docked with Neapolitan waste. Two men were arrested on charges of planning to hurl firebombs against the residence of the head of Sardinia's local regional government, Renato Soru.

The government in Rome has asked regional authorities all over the country to accept some of this huge accumulation of waste that Neapolitans fear is now a health hazard. A former police chief and an army general are in charge of operations to clean up the port city. Meanwhile, former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has added his voice to those criticising the authorities for allowing the rubbish crisis to get out of hand. He said Italy's image abroad had been seriously damaged.

David Willey, BBC News, Rome

Listen to the words

Not in my backyard
a fixed expression which means 'I think something should happen but I don't want it to happen near me' (here, people from Sicily and Sardinia want rubbish to be put somewhere but they don't want rubbish from Naples to be put on Sicily and Sardinia)

trash
unwanted things, rubbish or waste

merchant ship
boat which transports goods (rather than people as passengers)

scrutinised
looked at very carefully

to land
to unload things from a ship onto the ground

cargo ships and freight trains
boats and trains which carry goods (rather than people as passengers)

landfills
places where special services put people's waste and household rubbish which is then buried underground

scuffles
short, minor (not very serous or violent) fights

to hurl firebombs
to throw bombs that cause destruction by starting a fire rather than exploding

get out of hand
an idiom which means something can't be controlled any more

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