Watch: Shocking moment looters vandalise store in Hamburg protests

Black-clad anarchists try to blind G20 riot police and helicopter pilots with lasers as fires are lit across Hamburg and nearly 200 officers are injured

Anarchist protesters attempted to blind German police officers and helicopter pilots amid violent clashes during the G20 summit in Hamburg.

Almost 200 police officers have been wounded as an estimated 10,000 thugs went on the rampage for a second night in the northern German port city.

Shocking images show green lasers strobe the police lines in an effort to blind officers involved in attempts to secure the city.

Members of the anarchist Black Bloc have split throughout the city, setting alight cars and looting shops while groups fight riot police.

More than 20,000 police have been deployed in the northern German port city to protect world leaders attending the G20 conference.

One video shows protesters smashing the windows of parked cars before tossing in marine flares to firebomb the vehicles.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has hit out at protesters after chaos in the city of Hamburg as thousands of demonstrators clashed with police on the day the G20 summit opened.

US First Lady Melania Trump was earlier trapped inside her hotel after rioters firebombed a police station and set cars and buildings alight in the German city.

Police have called for reinforcements after tens of thousands of protesters descended on Hamburg, causing chaos.

The fires burned across the city as the world leaders attending the G20 conference spent the evening listening to Beethoven’s 9th Symphony and dining in style.

Police said at least 196 officers were injured in the clashes, with 83 protesters temporarily detained at the scene and 19 taken into custody.

Protesters torched cars and lorries, looted retail stores, lit off firecrackers and blasted music from Jimi Hendrix in a vain bid to drown out the classical music playing at the Elbphilarmonie concert hall across the Elbe River.

Reinforcements poured in from across Germany but police were unable to prevent thousands of protesters from fanning out across the northern port city.

The protests marred a gathering that German Chancellor Angela Merkel had hoped would demonstrate her country’s unshakeable commitment to freedom of speech and assembly.

She said: ‘I have every understanding for peaceful demonstrations but violent demonstrations put human lives in danger.’

Participants in the G20 meeting praised the work of police in keeping the event safe but said they had never seen protesters closer to such a summit than in Hamburg.

In the touristy Pferdemarkt area, known for its trendy cafes and nightlife, activists faced off against police in riot gear who were unable to put out fires, with billowing thick smoke dramatically reducing visibility.

In the nearby Schanzenviertel, looters plundered a supermarket. Nearby, a cash machine was burned out. Several police helicopters patrolled overhead.

The radical Black Bloc movement, which wants to overthrow capitalism, had some success in disrupting the leaders’ discussions despite the ring of security around them.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble cancelled an appearance in downtown Hamburg on Friday morning due to security concerns. Police also declined to clear U.S. first lady Melania Trump’s motorcade to leave her hotel for a tour of the city’s historic harbour, her spokeswoman said.

Marine police units intercepted 22 divers from the environmental pressure group Greenpeace who had also been trying to reach the concert hall, police said.

Police said they used water cannons to disperse protesters who broke into a riverside metro station that had earlier been sealed off. Nearby, two lorries were set ablaze.

Three officers required treatment in hospital, police said, noting that protesters had used slingshots as well as thrown bottles and stones.

Police Chief Ralf Martin Meyer told reporters that tight security around the conference area had caused the protesters to fan out around Hamburg, forcing police to request up to 1,000 reinforcements from across Germany.

In the violence, which first erupted during marches on Thursday, far-left protesters slashed the tyres of a car belonging to Canada’s G20 delegation and smashed windows of Mongolia’s consulate.

A police spokesman said only small numbers of far-left or anarchist protesters were involved in the disturbances, while the majority of an estimated 100,000 demonstrators in the city remained peaceful.

One of the many hovering police helicopters was nearly struck by a rocket flare, police said. On Thursday the pilots of another helicopter sustained eye injuries after a laser was directed against them

She thanked security forces for their work as the G20 met behind a heavy police presence in a no-go zone that was off-limits to most.

Thousands of officers in full riot gear patrolled as many as 30 different protest marches. Most of the demonstrations were peaceful and creative, but some rioters threw petrol bombs, iron rods and cobble stones.

More than 20,000 officers were on hand to guard the city’s streets, skies and waterways.

Police trucks blasted protesters back with water cannons, and officers physically dragged away a group holding a sit-in at the entrance to the summit grounds after they jeered and yelled at a convoy heading inside.

Anti-globalisation protesters also kept US first lady Melania Trump from joining the spouses of the other world leaders at the summit.

Violence seemed to be escalating on Friday evening as anti-globalisation activists forced their way into a closed train station by bending open the iron gates. Police responded by deploying a water cannon outside the Landungsbruecke station.

Protesters repeatedly tried pushing into the no-go zone – among them a group of 22 swimmers from Greenpeace who tried accessing the area from the Elbe River but did not succeed, police said.

Later on Friday, activists also attempted to get near Hamburg’s highly protected philharmonic hall, where international leaders were set to listen to a concert and have dinner together. Greenpeace boats blasted music toward the performance hall to disrupt the leaders’ meeting there.

Police condemned the ‘shocking criminal energy and high potential of violence’ on display and tweeted a photograph of an officer with a bloody wound they said was caused by slingshot catapults.

Some officers had to be taken to the hospital, including one whose eye was injured when a firework went off in front of him.

The city’s fire department said 11 activists were severely injured and taken to hospital after falling off a 13ft wall after fleeing from a confrontation with riot police.

Police could not say how many activists were injured in the clashes, but the fire department said that as of Friday morning they had taken 60 protesters to hospitals across the city.

President Donald Trump was forced to take a detour because of the widespread disorder.

Merkel said she could understand peaceful protests, but demonstrations that ‘put peoples’ lives in danger, put the protesters’ own lives in danger… are unacceptable’.

Shocking footage shows smoke billowing from vehicles as the city hosting the G20 summit looked like a warzone.

German police confirmed this morning that the police station had been targeted by ‘perpetrators of violence’, as thousands of officers flood the streets anticipating violent demonstrations.

It comes after more than 70 people were injured in clashes between riot police and anti-capitalists last night, with a march named ‘Welcome to Hell’ descending into chaos.

This morning Hamburg police used a water cannon to clear a blockade by protesters ahead of the opening of the summit.

A spokeswoman for the US First Lady told DPA: ‘We have not received the all-clear from police to leave the residence.’

https://youtu.be/bBZM6p5lqzk

Other spouses including Theresa May’s husband Philip and French president Emmanuel Macron’s wife Brigette have also been told to stay indoors.

A visit to a climate change centre by G20 spouses has been cancelled, DPA reports.

Hamburg police, who are already being backed up by officers from other German states as well as from Austria, made the request for reinforcements ‘in order to get relief’, a spokesman said.

Police said the blockade happened on the banks of the Outer Alster lake, some distance from the trade fair grounds where the summit is being held. They said they had repeatedly told a group of protesters to clear the road.

Officers repeatedly used water cannons, as well as pepper spray and batons, on Thursday evening amid clashes with violent protesters.

Up to 100,000 anti-capitalist protesters are expected to descend on the city today, as heads of state including US President Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin meet for the G20 talks.

Police said that at least 111 officers were hurt during yesterday’s clashes, one of whom had to be taken to a hospital with an eye injury after a firework exploded in front of him. Twenty-nine people were arrested and a further 15 temporarily detained.

Organiser Andreas Blechschmidt criticised what he said was a heavy-handed and ‘massive’ police response with batons.

‘The police should have reacted proportionally… It wasn’t necessary. There are a lot of people injured,’ Blechschmidt said on N-TV. Around 30 people were arrested.

‘War, climate change, exploitation are the result of the capitalist system that the G20 stands for and which 20,000 police are here to defend,’ demonstrator Georg Ismail told AFP.

Burned out cars today bear testimony to the violence ahead of the talks. Police believe as many as 8,000 protesters are ready to commit violence. More than 70 people were injured in last night’s clashes.

Officers say they repeatedly asked a group of demonstrators to remove their masks and hoods last night, but instead officers were hit with bottles and bricks – breaking the window of a riot van.

They then decided to separate the group from the rest of the march, which they estimated at 12,000 people in total.

The violence broke out near the start of the demonstration at a riverside plaza used for Hamburg’s weekly fish market.

Violent anti-G20 protests erupt in Hamburg as police try to keep peace from Akademi Portal on Vimeo.

As leaders arrived yesterday, riot police fired water cannon at a group of about a thousand black-clad protesters who hurled bottles in a demonstration organisers had dubbed ‘Welcome to Hell’.

Some 20,000 police from all of Germany’s 16 states have been deployed on the streets of Hamburg.

They will be facing off against up to 100,000 protesters, including an estimated 8,000 who police say are prepared to use violence.

Local resident Benjamin Laub, 53, said his neighbourhood has resembled a zone ‘under a state of emergency’ for days.

‘For a week we’ve heard the choppers above all the time. The buses don’t run, people leave their cars at home, they walk or ride bicycles. I’m carrying my passport for the first time in Germany (because of police checks),’ said the hockey trainer.

A livid Markus Munch, 48, speaking on his bike near Trump’s residence in a plush area beside the Alster lake twinkling in the summer sunshine, had little sympathy for the ‘idiots’ demonstrating.

‘It’s a total catastrophe that a minority can just riot like this,’ Munch told AFP. ‘These idiots have nothing better to do than to demonstrate. They have to be moved out.’

Donald Trump yesterday warned that the future of Western civilisation is at stake and the West must decide if it has the ‘will to survive’.

At the start of a four-day trip to Europe, the US President said the lack of a collective resolve could doom an alliance that endured through the Cold War.

In a speech in Warsaw – ahead of the G20 meeting in Hamburg – he lashed out at hostile forces, ranging from Islamic terrorism to Russia.

He addressed a large cheering crowd and allowed for long pauses as he listened to chants of ‘Donald Trump’ from the monument to the 1944 Uprising in the city.

Praising Poland for its resilience in the face of historic threats from Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, he declared: ‘Let us all fight like Poles.’

Mr Trump said: ‘As the Polish experience reminds us, the defence of the West ultimately rests not only on means but also on the will of its people to prevail.

Shocking moment looters vandalise store in Hamburg protests from Akademi Portal on Vimeo.

‘The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive.’ While it was no longer necessary to confront the ‘spectre of communism’ in Europe, there were other ‘dire threats’ to the West’s security and way of life, Mr Trump said.

‘We are confronted by another oppressive ideology – one that seeks to export terrorism and extremism all around the globe. America and Europe have suffered one terror attack after another. We’re going to get it to stop.’

He said during his visit to Saudi Arabia he had urged the leaders of 50 Muslim nations to help tackle Islamic extremists. He added: We must stand united against these shared enemies.’

Mr Trump was given a very warm welcome, the crowd cheering and chanting his name. Many were said to have been bussed in to ensure his reception was big and noisy.

Appearing to refer to America’s controversial travel ban, he said the US would always welcome new citizens but added: ‘Our borders will always be closed to terrorism and extremism of any kind.

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