Riot police use water cannons at Hamburg May Day demonstration

Dozens of police officers were injured during mass protests in Germany, France, Belgium, Italy, and Spain, as May Day demonstrations turned violent. Around 30,000 protesters took to the streets during rallies in Berlin on Saturday, police said, adding at least 93 officers were injured as some of the demonstrations turned violent. Some 354 protesters were detained. Police fired water cannon and tear gas in a Brussels park to break up an anti-lockdown party of several hundred people designed to defy coronavirus social distancing rules. Protests hit other European capitals too, most notably Paris, where police made 46 arrests as garbage bins were set on fire and the windows of a bank branch were smashed. Thousands also poured onto the streets of cities in Spain and Italy for the workers’ day protests in defiance of lockdown rules, resulting in violent clashes with police. Berlin’s head of police Barbara Slowik told local broadcaster rbb24: ’The violent riots that occurred is something that I very muc