Hamburg braced itself for fierce clashes between anarchists and police as thousands of black-clad protesters converged on the city’s Fish Market to demonstrate against the G20 summit and President Donald Trump’s arrival in the city.
The “Welcome to Hell” rally was billed as the climax of a packed schedule of protests against the summit, which police say have drawn some 8,000 potentially violent leftwing activists from all over Europe and beyond.
Hamburg’s police left nothing to chance, deploying high-tech water cannons and armoured vehicles in the streets around the fish market, as well as armed launches on the Elbe river. There were 20,000 officers in the city — the largest police deployment in Hamburg’s history.