Running battles as police scatter demonstrators in Hamburg while G20 rolls on

Police fired tear gas to disperse crowds of violent anti-capitalist protesters in Hamburg on Friday after an evening of clashes between police and protesters seeking to disrupt the city’s summit of global leaders.

Heavily armed police commandos moved in after activists had spent much of the day attempting to wrest control of the streets from more than 15,000 police, setting fires, looting and building barricades.

With meetings between leaders of the club of 20 largest global economies over for the day, police prepared to storm the Schanzenviertel district before midnight.

Protesters had torched cars and lorries, broken windows in banks, looted retail stores, set off firecrackers and hurled paving slabs and other objects at police. Some 197 officers were injured in two days of clashes in the port city. Police made 19 arrests and detained dozens more.

The clashes are awkward for Chancellor Angela Merkel, who had hoped to demonstrate Germany’s unshakeable commitment to free speech, assembly and dissent by holding the summit in the centre of a city with a proud radical tradition.

“I have every understanding for peaceful demonstrations but violent demonstrations put human lives in danger,” Merkel, who was born in Hamburg, said earlier in the evening.