Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi convened an emergency cabinet meeting to study the latest garbage crisis affecting Naples.

The problem has been shaking that southern region since Tuesday, with street clashes and vandalism, after residents in Terzigno, which has a waste treatment center, opposed the opening of a new dump and more waste being brought to the existing one.

Residents from neighboring towns joined in the protests in Terzigno to opposed the planned dump in Vesuvio National Park, which officials say would become the largest such site in Europe.

On Wednesday, demonstrators burned five trucks in the town of Boscoreale and pitched stones and Molotov cocktails at police.

The mayor at Terzigno threatened to join the protests if the federal government did not lay out an immediate solution to the crisis, while the Naples Mayor Rosa Russo Iervolino demanded federal intervention.

Similar garbage crises have occurred in Naples previously, due to poor work by garbage companies and the alleged involvement of the mafia in the waste collection business. The most recent episode was in 2008, when mass protests were staged after more than 110,000 tons of urban and industrial waste piled up in the area.