WATCH: Tiger causes panic in Italian city after escaping circus

ROME: A tiger caused mass panic in an Italian city after it escaped a circus cage and entered a town with home to 38,000 people.

Locals couldn’t believe their eyes as the white feline, called Oscar, perched outside of a block of flats in a town near Palermo.

Mayor Piero Capizzi said he thought someone was joking when he was told a tiger was on the loose in Monreale.

Traffic was blocked for a few hours along the nearby highway as authorities struggled to contain the enormous tiger.

But eventually he was re-captured after being coaxed to go inside a series of increasingly smaller cages.

He was then taken back to the circus – where he will be made to perform on Monday.