Marchers protest police eviction of asylum-seekers in Rome

ROME – Several thousand asylum-seekers, other migrants and supporters have marched through Rome to protest Italian police’s recent evictions of migrant camps.

Some carried a banner Saturday proclaiming themselves “refugees not terrorists.”

On Thursday, police used water cannons to clear out 100 asylum-seekers, most of them from Ethiopia or Eritrea, from a Rome square. Authorities had already cleared out most of the 800 migrants who had been squatting in a building near the square since 2013.

Human rights advocates and the U.N. refugee agency protested that the evictions were conducted without warning.

Many asylum-seekers sleep on the streets of Rome for lack of housing.

Hundreds of thousands of migrants rescued at sea have arrived in Italy in the last few years. Some Italian towns are refusing to take in any more.