At least 20 police were injured on Thursday and there was further violence overnight as the chronic problem of waste disposal in Italy’s third largest city intensified.

“The government is very concerned by this,” Community Affairs Minister Andrea Ronchi told reporters after the meeting began. “The ... talks will analyze the situation.”

Police in riot gear confronted around 2,000 demonstrators, who threw stones, marbles and fire crackers and used tree trunks to block access to a dump near Terzigno, the town at the foot of Mount Vesuvius which has been at the center of the crisis.

Hundreds of tons of garbage lie uncollected in streets and a dispute has erupted over a new dump near Terzigno, in the Province of Naples, where the existing facility is full and where residents complain about the stench and toxic waste.

Friday’s emergency talks included Berlusconi, his chief of staff, senior ministers, the governor of Campania and the head of the Civil Protection Agency.

“Naples is no good, we are drowning in garbage again. They have to open the new dump but they need to do it far from the houses, because rubbish spreads disease,” an 80-year old woman, who gave her name as Assunta, told Reuters.

Headlines on Friday were dominated by the violence, which media reports compared to a “guerrilla war” but the clashes were only the latest episode in a crisis that has persisted for years and which in 2008 prompted the then newly elected Berlusconi to declare a national disaster.

Organized crime interests have been deeply entwined with rubbish collection in Naples for many years but the problem has been aggravated by inefficiency, political opportunism and cheap, sometimes shady business operators.

The latest outbreak is a blow to Berlusconi, who used to attack the previous center-left government over the issue and who often cites clearing Naples’ streets shortly after he came to power in 2008 as one of his government’s main achievements.

Berlusconi lays the blame for the crisis squarely at the feet of the center-left mayor of Naples, Rosa Russo Iervolino, but a complex web of overlapping political authorities has hindered any solution to the problem.

Local authorities say a dispute with a waste contractor has aggravated recent problems and individual local authorities have refused to take waste overflows from neighboring areas, heightening the sense of frustration.

Residents’ anger over the Terzigno site has been compounded by repeated changes of policy, with plans for a new dump announced, canceled and then re-confirmed on different occasions.

Stefano Caldoro, the governor of the Campania region, said the changes had not helped but he said a decision had now been taken to open a modern, safe and clean waste disposal facility at Terzigno that would pose no risk to health and safety.

“I understand their fears but they have to believe what we tell them,” he told the daily La Repubblica. “Now there is a firm line. There are no alternatives. We’re going with Terzigno but with full guarantees.”

But in Naples’ western neighborhood of Fuorigrotta, residents walking past shoulder-high piles of waste were skeptical and mostly sympathetic with the Terzigno protesters.

“I think if I lived there I’d do the same,” said a woman who did not want to give her name. “They insist that everything will be fine, that it won’t be bad for the children but these are technical things that we know nothing about,” she said.