Police battle rioters as May Day ends in two big German cities

May 2, 2010, 0:55 GMT

Berlin - Police battled rioters late Saturday in two German cities, using water cannon on trucks to drive back crowds of anarchists throwing stones, bottles and fireworks.

Violence, including brawls between leftists and rightists, anarchists flinging stones and bottles at police and rampages into banks and shops has been an annual May Day ritual for more than two decades in Berlin and Hamburg.

In the capital, Berlin, the violence began after 10,000 leftists and anarchists held a late-afternoon parade. Police were more robust than in earlier years, arresting assailants promptly. After hours of skirmishes, the streets were calmer by midnight.

In the port city of Hamburg, the rioting followed a parade by 1,500 leftist radicals and continued into the early hours of Sunday. Police admitted the violence had spread throughout an inner-city residential district.

The Hamburg rioters vandalized several banks, overturned parked cars and built barricades and set them on fire.

Police said that by an initial count, 18 people had been injured.

Thousands of leftists had earlier thwarted a neo-Nazi parade through Berlin, with riot police giving up attempts to clear the parade route after hours of manhandling away people obstructing the road.

Around 600 members of far-right groups, who had obtained permission under German free-speech laws to march along a 6-kilometre route, were turned back by police after marching less than 1,000 metres.

The rightists, mostly youths with shaven heads, vainly tried to march through the liberal, middle-class Prenzlauer Berg area of the German capital. They retraced their steps, were escorted by helmeted riot police to Berlin train stations and dispersed.

At least 300 more far-rightists, including neo-Nazis from Spain, Italy and the Czech Republic, were foiled when they tried to hold an unauthorized rally in a different part of Berlin. Police temporarily detained 200 of them to prevent that event.

Leftists, who claimed they had marshalled 10,000 counter- demonstrators, claimed success with their customary tactics of physically blocking the rightists' path.

Wolfgang Thierse, 66, a Social Democrat who is deputy speaker of the German Parliament, was one of those removed from the parade route. A police officer tugged his elbow to make him stand up and walk off the roadway.

Attempting to define itself as a voice of labour, the German far right regularly tries to parade on May Day, the international workers' festival. The leftists and German trade unions mark the day with their own rallies.