ROME (AP) — About 150 Gypsies, whose camp had been dismantled, took refuge in one of this city’s ancient basilicas, creating a standoff on Saturday with city officials.

Italy is struggling to deal with hundreds of Roma, as Gypsies are often called, who live in illegal trailer settlements on Rome’s outskirts. In February, four children died in their sleep as a fire tore through a shack in an illegal camp, prompting the mayor to promise that the camps would be torn down and safer ones built.

The Gypsies entered the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls on Friday to protest city plans to send women and children, but not men, to shelters, temporarily breaking up families.

City hall has said that families would be reunited in a Roma camp in a few weeks. The mayor of Rome, Gianni Alemanno, has declined to send the men to the shelters. “The solution cannot be, as is demanded by many Gypsy families and various association, that we offer an accommodation to these families,” he said.