By IRNA
Berlin : Scores of people were injured Thursday as radical leftists and anarchists led fierce street battles with baton-wielding riot police in two German cities, Hamburg and Nuremberg, protesting May Day marches by the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party (NPD), according to media reports.
In Hamburg, masked and black-clad anti-neo Nazi protesters pelted police with stones and bottles and set several cars and hundreds of tires and garbage cans on fire.
Police deployed water guns mounted on trucks and used pepper spray to keep the demonstration route of around 700 neo-Nazis open.
Leftist organizers claimed they had 10,000 demonstrators who were doing their utmost to disrupt the NPD march in Hamburg’s working-class district of Barmbek.
Hamburg was also the scene of pre-May Day riots late Wednesday night.
Meanwhile, May 1 demonstrations turned also violent in the southern city of Nuremberg as anti-Nazi protesters targeted a neo-Nazi rally with raw eggs, bottles, stones, fire-crackers and milk cartons.
Several radical leftist were slightly hurt, battling police, according to witnesses.
At least four police officers were injured in the scuffles as 10,000 people tried also to disrupt a march of hundreds of NPD supporters.
Thousands of riot police were based in Hamburg and Nuremberg ahead of the neo-Nazi May Day demonstrations.
In other related news, the eastern city of Leipzig witnessed also pre-May Day clashes between police and rioters as hundreds of violent-prone people pelted security forces with bottles.
In the past, May Day celebrations have been marred by violence in Germany, especially in Berlin where bloody May 1 riots have became a sad tradition.