Several young Italians who had arrived in Tirana for vacation have reportedly fallen victim to physical violence.
The case, according to Italian media, where young people have denounced the event by publishing photos of the violence, is said to have occurred a few days ago in the Albanian capital.
Sources from the Tirana Police, contacted by Top Channel, indicate that the case in question is being verified, but without providing any further information, not even through official channels.
According to the complaint of young Italians from Venosa, the incident occurred near Skanderbeg Square, when the 6 young Italians were chased and attacked by a group of young Albanians.
According to the testimony of one of them, the young Albanians threatened them with a knife and demanded money.
Meanwhile, they say that even though they asked for help, the reaction of some officers who were at the scene was not appropriate, while they later say that other police officers arrived and made it possible to calm the situation, but as a result, one of the tourists was injured.
“We arrived in Albania, in Tirana, on July 29. That same evening, at around 9:30 p.m., after taking a shower, we left the apartment we had rented to go out for dinner. There were six of us. As soon as we set foot on the street, one of us went to a small shop to buy a bottle of water. At that moment, a group of local children approached us and asked us where we were from; we simply replied that we were Italian. We started walking towards Skanderbeg Square, the main square, when this group – about 20 very young children, between 16 and 18 years old – started following us. They started throwing water, bottles and even stones at us. At first, we tried to ignore them and continue, both because we had just arrived – it was our first night of vacation – and because we were in a foreign country and wanted to avoid any problems.
The situation suddenly escalated. They surrounded one of us and demanded money, threatening him directly with a knife. At that moment, people in the area started running towards the police officers who were nearby, while this group continued to chase us, throwing stones and beating those of us who remained behind with fists and rubber batons.
Almost all of them managed to escape, except for one: they grabbed him, punched him, knocked him to the ground, and continued to beat him while he was on the ground.
An incredible and extremely serious thing was the attitude of the first officers/policemen on the scene: some of us desperately called for help, but they pretended as if nothing was happening. We asked a passerby for the local police emergency number to call for help, but there was no answer. Fortunately, other officers intervened later, managing to scare off the attackers and calling an ambulance. One of us suffered several wounds and injuries to various parts of his body and was treated at the scene.
“We thought about our injured friend and that it would be better to take him to the hospital in Venosa. So at 6 am on July 30, we boarded the first available flight and returned home,” one of them confessed./Top Channel
