Riot police clashed with
protesters close to the Gleneagles Hotel in Scotland on
Wednesday after a demonstration against Group of Eight
(G8) leaders ended in chaos.
Around 100 officers in full
riot gear mounted a baton charge to drive protesters away
from a security fence surrounding the hotel, where
President Bush and his G8 counterparts were due to meet.
Demonstrators from a range
of anti-capitalist, anti-globalization and anarchist
groups scattered across an oat field when the police
charged. A handful threw stones and clods of earth at the
police.
Officers, some on horseback
and others flown in by helicopters that rattled the
windows of the summit hotel, managed to clear the field by
1700 GMT, shortly after Bush arrived in Scotland.
Police said they made a
handful of arrests, taking to 100 the total number of
those detained in the area during skirmishes over the past
24 hours. They estimated there were between 5,000 and
6,000 people on the march.
"What we have seen
today follows on from scenes across the central belt of
Scotland -- a determined group of people intent on causing
disruption," said Willie Bald, assistant chief
constable of Tayside police.
"(We) have planned for
this type of incident and the officers involved ... are to
be praised for their response under considerable
provocation."
The clashes followed an
otherwise peaceful march from the small town of
Auchterarder in central Scotland to within a few hundred
meters (yards) of the nearby hotel, and echoed violence in
nearby towns earlier.
In Stirling, a handful of
hooded protesters broke car windows, threw bricks and
clashed with riot police. Police said eight officers
needed hospital treatment.
Protesters also put up
impromptu barricades and threw obstacles on the roads
around Gleneagles, blocking parts of the main highway in
central Scotland for more than four hours.
Police needed cutting gear
to remove some activists who chained themselves together
across the north-south highway.
The violence was nothing
like as serious as clashes at previous G8 summits such as
Genoa, Italy, in 2001 or Evian, France, in 2003, but will
heighten fears that radical groups may try to hijack the
summit, which runs until Friday.
Most of those on the march
from Auchterarder said they wanted a peaceful protest
against Bush and the leaders of Britain, France, Germany,
Italy, Japan, Canada and Russia.
The protesters want
concrete progress at the summit on issues such as climate
change, debt relief and aid for Africa.
"I never, ever march,
but I thought I should today, because I support all these
issues," said Susan McColl, an author in her fifties
who lives on the west coast of Scotland.
(Additional reporting by
Gideon Long)
