May Day Protests Take Place Across Europe

There were angry scenes in European cities today as protestors took to the streets to vent anti-American anger as part of worldwide May Day demonstrations.

In Athens, thousands of protesters burned flags and chanted antiwar slogans outside the US Embassy. At least 7,000 people joined the demonstration through the city centre, where hundreds of riot police guarded the embassy and other sites. There were no reports of clashes.

But trouble flared in Berlin, where 29 riot police were injured by rock-throwing demonstrators in the early hours of today, ahead of the main marches through the city.

A Berlin police spokesman said the violence erupted shortly before midnight in a park in the eastern district of Prenzlauer Berg. He said demonstrators threw rocks, bottles and even shot fireworks at the helmet-clad police. A number of people at a nearby open air concert were also injured.

A total of 97 people were detained, police said, during violence that lasted several hours. The disturbance erupted without warning during a previously peaceful protest in which about 4,000 people gathered in the Mauerpark, a grassy park along the former no man's land where the Berlin Wall once stood.

Berlin has long been the scene of May Day holiday clashes between left-wing anarchists and police. In Hamburg, scuffles with police were also reported at a protest by about 500 people. Seventy four were detained and three arrested for offences such as bodily harm.

In Bulgaria, about 5,000 supporters of the opposition Socialist party gathered for a protest calling on the conservative government to resign for what they said was its failure to improve the country's dismal living standards.

The demonstrators, most of them elderly people, rallied in Sofia, the capital, waving red flags and chanting "Resignation!"

There were more peaceful scenes in Moscow, where thousands of people across the country gathered for May Day marches and rallies reminiscent of the Soviet era.

Under sunny skies, the Federation of Independent Trade Unions and the pro-presidential United Russia party held rallies in the Russian capital. Marchers demanded an increase in wages, higher student stipends and improved social services.

During Soviet times, tens of thousands of Russians would flood Red Square when May 1 was one of the most important dates on the ceremonial calendar to mark their solidarity with workers around the world.

However, opinion polls showed that for most in modern-day Russia, the day was being celebrated primarily as a day off work, to be spent catching up with friends and family. Russia's Public Opinion Foundation found that only 4% of Russians planned to participate in marches or rallies this year.

In South Africa, meanwhile, 80 trade unionists were feared dead after their bus crashed into a reservoir on the way to a rally. The union members were on their way to May Day celebrations in the town of Qwa Qwa in the Free State province when their bus driver apparently lost his way and ended up driving down a gravel path that led to the dam.