Police hurt in May Day clashes in Germany

By Erik Kirschbaum

BERLIN (Reuters) - May Day violence erupted across Germany on Friday with more than 50 riot police injured in Berlin and Hamburg in clashes with demonstrators protesting over the economic crisis.

In scattered outbursts of violence in Germany's two largest cities, 200 demonstrators chanting anti-capitalism slogans threw bottles and stones at riot police while in Hamburg others smashed a bank window.

A total of 57 people were detained in Berlin for rioting or resisting arrest and 48 officers were hurt after five cars were set on fire and four portable toilets torched, police said.

Police later scuffled with left-wing demonstrators trying to block a local rail station in Berlin near the headquarters of the far-right NPD ahead of a rally. Police were also attacked by groups of several hundred leftists in both Mainz and in Verden.

In Dortmund, police said 200 far-right extremists threw sticks and stones at participants of a union rally and at police. Several police were injured and police vehicles damaged.

"On the one hand there are people out in the streets protesting peacefully against the economic crisis and there's nothing at all wrong that," said police spokesman Frank Miller.

"But when people burn cars and trash containers and commit other criminal acts -- that has nothing to do with political protests," he told N-TV television at the scene of one especially fiery riot in the eastern district of Friedrichshain.

Germany faces its worst recession since World War Two with the economy contracting by 6 percent in 2009. Some economists expect unemployment to rise to close to five million in 2010.