Chinese Crowd Blocks Italian Tour Bus

ROME — Demonstrators in western China surrounded a coach carrying Italian tourists and tried to commandeer it to block a road before allowing it to pass, one of the passengers said Sunday.

Tourist Nunzio Ricevuto said the incident occurred on a journey from the western city of Xian to the Shanghai airport, where his party joined an Alitalia flight that took off for Rome on Saturday night with about 200 Italians fleeing China.

“We met several barricades and demonstrations along the route,” Ricevuto said. “At one point we were surrounded by demonstrators who wanted to use our coach as a barricade because there was still a small gap in the road.”