Horror: Two US students who are friends are raped in Italy after they were separated by two attackers on their way home from an evening outing and led to different locations where they were attacked.

Two American college students were raped after being separated by opportunistic attackers, aged 18 and 19, on their way back to their hotel in the Sicilian city of Syracuse.

The suspects, who are locals, are currently in police custody.

The horror occurred on the night of July 3. The victims were returning from an evening in the Ortigia district and were in the marina area when they were approached.

The attackers were travelling on a scooter. According to reports from Sicily, the victims tried to use a cigarette vending machine, but were unable to do so because Italian vending machines require the buyer to show an identity card to verify their age.

The two US citizens were separated when one of the boys offered them a map. Then the attacks occurred.

One of the women was attacked near the marina, the other was reportedly taken to a house where she suffered the same fate.

Both victims immediately went to the police the morning after the attack. The Siracusa vice squad opened an investigation and quickly identified the two men.

They were arrested at dawn on July 5, charged with aggravated sexual assault and taken to a local jail.

The two victims are in Italy for study purposes. In a statement from the public prosecutor’s office, it is said that the attackers took advantage of the two women’s lack of Italian language skills to stage their attack.

The statements of the two women are supported by witness statements and the investigations carried out at the crime scene, reports the Corriere Del Mezzogiorno.

The US State Department has currently issued a Level 2 travel advisory for Italy. This means that travelers should exercise “increased caution” – but for US citizens, this is due to the possibility of an increase in terrorism and not because of crime.

In April, a Canadian woman was raped in the B&B where she was staying in Palermo, Sicily’s largest city.

The victim reportedly told police that she met one of the men, a hospital porter, when she visited her boyfriend in the hospital after he sustained a minor injury.

She told the officers that she and the doorman had started talking and that she had invited him to her guesthouse. The tourist described him as “very nice” but “at a certain point I can’t remember anything anymore,” she is reported to have said, according to ANSA.

In 2019, an American woman was lured out of a bar by three Sicilian men and brutally raped in a nearby parking lot. The three attackers were sentenced to four years in prison after appealing their original seven-year sentences.

Last month, two Italian soccer players – Mattia Lucarelli, son of Italian left-wing soccer icon Cristiano, and Federico Apolloni – were sentenced to over three and a half years in prison for raping an American woman in a Milan apartment.