Groups of protesters vandalized the center of Romanian capital Bucharest on Sunday evening ( January 15 ) and clashed with police late into the night. Three bank branches and ATMs were destroyed, bus and tram stops, lamp posts, six traffic lights, and seven traffic signs were knocked down or burned during the conflict, according to Bucharest Mayor Sorin Oprescu.

Moreover, fences in downtown Bucharest were destroyed, as well as dozens of street benches, trash cans and phone cabins. Also, in different areas downtown, pieces of the sidewalk are missing.

“I don’t know what people that vandalized were thinking. They had nothing to do with those who came to protest peacefully,” said Sorin Oprescu.

A number of stores and pubs in the center were also destroyed. Protesters looted products off the shelves in some places. The protest organized on Sunday evening ended with the destruction of vehicles and dozens of people injured, including gendarmes.

The gendarmes took 49 people to police stations for identification.

The Sunday protest in Bucharest started at around 15:00, when about 100 protesters first came to Universitate Square. Their number increased with the passing hours to around 1,000. No incidents were reported until 19:00, when a group of football supporters joined the protesters. The supporters, nicknamed ‘ultras’, threw petrol bombs, firecrackers, stones and even trash cans at the gendarmes. Read more about it here.

Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com

(photo source: Romanian Gendarmerie)