LEIPZIG: Police and protesters clashed again in the eastern German city of Leipzig on, after people gathered to protest in defiance of a ban of the left-wing demonstration.
Police said there were “massive riots” as protesters threw fireworks,stones, bottles and incendiary devices at officers during the demonstration at Alexis-Schumann-Platz.
Stones and other projectiles hit several officers and some were injured, the police said, though they did not provide exact figures.
In Leipzig’s Connewitz district, several barricades made of garbage cans and pallets were set on fire while firecrackers were also set off on the street where a larger “Day X” demonstration by the radical left-wing scene was supposed to take place in the afternoon. Masked people kept throwing new wood into the fire. Shortly before 11 pm police began to extinguish the barricades with water cannons.
Not far from there, according to the police, stones were thrown at a police station and other barricades were set on fire. Water cannons were deployed there as well.
The “Day X” protest was called after a Dresden court handed down a lengthy prison term to a left-wing student for leading a group found to have carried out violent attacks on people they saw as right-wing activists.
Five arrest warrants were issued, a police spokeswoman said. The five men affected, aged 20 to 32, are accused of breaching the peace. — dpa
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