Masked men raided a Pakistani restaurant overnight Monday and beat up a group of Romanians, as tensions ran high in Italy after a series of sex attacks blamed on immigrants. Further fat was poured on the fire when an Italian government minister called Monday for some rapists to be surgically castrated. "About 20 masked assailants went to a kebab restaurant run by a Pakistani in a neighbourhood in eastern Rome," a police official told AFP.
"They beat four Romanians with sticks... and broke the restaurant's window." Two of the victims were taken to hospital but later released, the official said, adding that the assailants fled before police arrived on the scene. Italians have been outraged by a series of sex attacks in recent weeks, including the rape of a young teenager last Saturday in a Rome park and two others further north in Bologna and Milan.