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Violent protests in Copenhagen
16/12/2006 22:41 - (SA)
Copenhagen - Protests over the closure of a youth centre turned violent Saturday, as hundreds of demonstrators clashed with police in the Danish capital.
Led by an extreme left group, the protesters hurled cobblestones, bottles, tins of paint and other objects at police who responded with a baton charge and tear gas to disperse the crowd.
Danish television cited witnesses as saying that one protestor and three policemen, including one who had been seriously injured, had been taken to hospital.
By late afternoon, the working class neighbourhood of Noerrebro where the clashes took place was peppered with small fires, barricades, the debris of shattered windows and overturned garbage cans.
"Around three hundred protestors have been arrested and more will follow in the hours to come," police spokesman Flemming Steen Munch told AFP.
The police's aim was to "arrest as many as possible in order to put an end to the troubles caused by the demonstrators," he said, adding that the situation had become "relatively calm" again as night fell.
Similar confrontations have been staged for weeks since the sale of a 25-year-old Ungdomhuset youth shelter. The building is expected to close early next year.
"Police deliberately provoked us by blocking the route of our demo. We just defended ourselves," a 19-year-old from Ungdomhuset who gave his name as Jan told AFP.
He said that "sympathisers from Norway, Sweden, Germany, Russia, France, Spain and the Netherlands came to support us in our struggle to the end to keep our house."
Jan said the four-storey Ungdomhuset was a "youth centre with a political and cultural character, organising concerts, films, debates, meetings and other activities in a spirit of international solidarity."
Copenhagen council has sold the building to a "Christian fundamentalist sect," he added.
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