Siege of Italy's coronavirus ghetto enters its second day: Riot police reinforcements are sent in to stop residents escaping from locked down tower blocks filled with migrant workers

Riot police reinforcements have been sent to an Italian council estate where a cluster of coronavirus cases in five quarantined apartment blocks have sparked tensions with locals.

Some 700 residents were placed in total lockdown for 15 days this week in the complex in Mondragone - 60km north of Naples - where 49 people tested positive for coronavirus.

Four of the high-rise blocks house undocumented Bulgarian workers while Italian squatters occupy the fifth. 

Those under lockdown must remain inside - not even emerging for food - while tests are carried out on all the residents. 

But hundreds of Bulgarians who wanted to return to work to earn money for food came out to demonstrate on Thursday. They were persuaded by police to return inside.

News that the residents had left the Palazzi Cirio estate reached angry locals who blame them for spreading the virus. Crowds turned up to hurl stones and trash cans, local media reported. 

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Civil protection and army officers outside the Italian council estate where a cluster of coronavirus cases in five quarantined apartment blocks have sparked tensions with locals

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Residents stand on a balcony of one of the apartment blocks. Occupants have been told they cannot leave the five blocks

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A healthcare worker wearing a protective suit carries an oxygen tank into a locked-down apartment block in Mondragone

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An Italian police officer wearing a protective face mask stand guard below the locked-down buildings yesterday

Since the clashes, 50 army soldiers have been sent in to secure the zone.  

De Luca said a few people with the virus had since slipped through the net and disappeared, but insisted surveillance of the estate would be 24 hours non stop from now on. 

The south has been spared the high numbers of coronavirus cases that have ravaged northern Italy.

Known for his particularly hard line on anti-contagion measures throughout the nationwide coronavirus outbreak this year, De Luca has vowed to lock down all of Mondragone, population 30,000, if the number of cases at the hotspot reach 100.

'Have I been clear? I'm used to speaking clearly,' De Luca told RAI state TV. 

The complex must be kept in 'rigorous isolation,' De Luca said, with the national civil protection agency delivering groceries to occupants.

That means that for 15 days, 'nobody leaves and nobody enters' the apartments.

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Following yesterday's clashes, (police pictured yesterday) riot police reinforcements have been sent to the council estate

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Italian army officers stand at a road block in front of an apartment complex where dozens of Covid-19 cases have been registered

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A healthcare worker wearing a protective suit is seen inside a van near the quarantined residential complex

Organised crime expert Roberto Saviano said: 'The Bulgarian workers... are part of the endless labour force working in the southern countryside without rights, often without contracts, without any security.

'It's easy in this case to say that those spreading the disease are the foreigners, the invaders, the immigrants, the families of Bulgarian workers accused of going out to continue working.

'But it would have happened the same if it had been Italian workers living in those working conditions, with those wages'. 

Corriere della Sera's editorialist Goffredo Buccini said the estate is 'one of the thousands of ghettos in Italy, where we amass undocumented foreigners to make them live in more or less heinous conditions.' 

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Yesterday, an angry resident quarantined in one of the blocks threw a wooden chair off the balcony 

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The man was one of 700 people ordered to stay indoors in four council housing blocks in Mondragone

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The region's head Vincenzo De Luca called for back-up from the army. New cases, including those who are asymptomatic, are being transferred to a local hospital. (It is not known if those pictured have displayed symptoms)

This is not the only cluster of new cases in Italy - which lifted its lockdown at the start of June after three months of a pandemic which has officially killed over 34,600 people.

At least 64 cases have emerged at a warehouse in Bologna used by express courier Bartolini, including 17 friends and relatives of workers.

Italian media identified 10 cases of new clusters across the country this week, including in care homes in Como and Alessandria in the north, and a religious institute in Rome. 

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Ten scientists in Italy on Wednesday released a joint statement declaring the coronavirus emergency to be 'over'. Above, the scene in Mondragone on Thursday

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Crowds gather at the base of the apartments on Thursday. Some Italian protesters responded to the furniture-hurling residents by throwing stones at the Bulgarians' cars and smashing their windows

Yesterday, an angry resident quarantined in one of the blocks threw a wooden chair off the balcony. 

A group of Italian protesters responded to the furniture-hurling by throwing stones at the Bulgarians' cars and smashing the windows.

The police and army were sent in to secure the Covid hot spot after frustrated residents attempted to escape from the blocks.

One group ducked under the police tape cordoning off the complex on Thursday and had to be marched back in by police. 

New cases, including those who are asymptomatic, are being transferred to a local hospital.