ROME -- A 13-year-old Roma boy died Friday after being hit by a firework rocket and 79 other people were injured by fireworks and Italians firing off pistols to celebrate the arrival of 2021, despite appeals by authorities for a subdued New Year's Eve and a curfew from 10 p.m., hospital officials said.

 The gypsey teenager died from cardiac arrest at a hospital in Asti in Piedmont where he was taken with a stomach wound from the petard. Irate relatives smashed up the emergency case entrance and the car park at the hospital because they were not allowed to see the boy's body pending an autopsy. Carabinieri were investigating the death, initially suspected of being from a gunshot wound, police sources said.

 Some 23 of the 79 people injured required hospital treatment from the festivities. The casualty toll was lower than that inflicted ushering in 2020, when one person was killed and 204 were injured, of whom 38 required hospital admission.

 In Milan two men were wounded by bullets in a firefight that erupted between shooters in the San Siro area, one of them was operated on.

 jp