COPENHAGEN Anti-terror police lower themselves on to the roof of a building for the eviction of squatters that led to clashes and more than 70 arrests.

Three people were injured, including a German who was hit on the head, when demonstrators fought hundreds of police sent in to clear a former theatre in Copenhagen. The highly publicised eviction angered the squatters and other youths, who have for years regarded the building as free public housing. It began yesterday morning when helicopters flew in antiterror police, and officers with antiriot gear sealed off streets as the squatters were taken out.

Protesters quickly gathered behind police lines, shouting: “Stop police brutality.” They ripped up cobblestones from streets and threw them at officers, erected barricades with rubbish containers and tried to cross cordons.

Of the 70 who were arrested, at least 35 had locked themselves inside the theatre. Police said that foreign citizens were likely to be among those arrested. Border crossings with Sweden and Germany were being monitored because Danish squatters had called on their web page for foreign sympathisers to help them.

Last year two courts ordered the squatters to hand over the building to a Christian group that bought it six years ago. The squatters refused, saying the city had no right to sell the four-storey building while it was still in use. They are demanding another building as a replacement.

In the southwestern Swedish city of Malmö, three men suspected of heading to join the protests were arrested carrying flammables and explosives. (AP)

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