NATO summit protest turns violent

STRASBOURG, France – Hundreds of protesters attacked police and set a hotel and customs station ablaze Saturday in this historic Alsatian city on the German border chosen by NATO summit organizers as a symbol of European unity.

First lady Michelle Obama and other spouses canceled a visit to a cancer hospital out of concern for security, the French president’s office said, after hundreds of protesters took up positions near the hospital they were to visit.

Most protesters marched peacefully, calling for an end to war and decrying NATO as a tool of Western imperialism.

But a demonstration that began calmly turned violent around noon in east Strasbourg about a mile from the Rhine River and the German border. An AP reporter saw police in body armor and helmets hoisting shields as they were pelted by several hundred protesters with rocks, sticks and then Molotov cocktails.

About 100 officers responded by lobbing concussion grenades and volleys of tear gas into the crowds of demonstrators, many dressed in black and wearing masks or balaclavas.

“I’ve never pulled so much metal out of people,” said Ramon Schmidt, a medic tending to injured demonstrators.

Members of the violence-prone “black bloc” – named for their black clothes and hoods – then headed toward the Europe Bridge over the Rhine.

French Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie condemned the violence, telling France-3 television that some of the protesters were “very violent.”

“There was a band of hoodlums, you must call them by their name, who were there only to destroy,” she said.