Boars invade Rome's mayoral election race

• Sightings of wild boars trotting along the streets have become so commonplace in some neighbourhoods of Rome that the problem has spilled over into the city's mayoral campaign.

The animals have been increasingly drawn to Rome, attracted by the piles of stinking trash that tumbles out of often unemptied rubbish skips.

“I am scared ... one time I saw them as I was going to throw the rubbish away. They came after me,” Rome resident Rosa Carletti told Reuters TV.

A Reuters video on Wednesday showed adult boars walking through northern Rome with their piglets, blithely passing cars and pedestrians, without any fear or caution.

“Even walking to school ... has become dangerous here,” said Nunzia Cammino, who lives in the north of the capital.

Mayor Virginia Raggi, a member of the 5-Star Movement, is seeking re-election in the October vote and has sought to shift the blame for the unwelcome visitors onto her political foes.

In a lawsuit she filed this month, she accuses the Lazio region, which is centred on Rome and is led by the centre-left Democratic Party, of failing to keep the animals out of the capital.

The region has denied her accusations, saying management of the animals outside the countryside that rings the city is up to Rome's various municipal councils.

Roberto Gualtieri, a PD member and one of Raggi's main opponents in the mayoral race, has said the lawsuit is “a joke” and has accused the incumbent administration of mismanagement.

In May, six boar were seen harassing a woman in a car park near Rome, forcing her to drop her shopping bags and flee. Last October, there was outrage after police shot and killed a sow and her six piglets on a playground near the Vatican.