Twin battlefields for Merkel
Violent protests clog city streets while international leaders tackle pressing global problems in the G20 summit.
Anti-globalisation activists rioted for a second night as Hamburg hosted the Group of 20 leaders, setting up street barricades, looting supermarkets and attacking police with slingshots and petrol bombs.
Police say riots were extremely violent in the early hours yesterday, local time, in the city’s Schanzenviertel neighbourhood.
Hundreds of officers went into buildings to arrest rioters while being attacked with iron rods and Molotov cocktails thrown from the roofs. Thirteen activists were arrested when special units stormed one building.
About 500 people looted a supermarket as well as smaller stores. Cars were torched, street fires lit as activists built barricades with garbage cans and bikes.
World leaders last night were tackling issues including terrorism, climate change and trade in the final day of the G20 summit.
US President Donald Trump met Britain’s Prime Minister on the sidelines of the summit.
He said last night that he and Prime Minister Theresa May have had “tremendous talks” and developed a “special relationship”.
Trump also said they are working on a trade deal that will be “great for both countries”, but he provided no details.
Earlier, Trump used his first meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the G20 to discuss the alleged Russian hacking of last year’s US presidential election.
Both sides called the meeting positive but differed in their descriptions of the hacking discussion.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said, “President Trump said he heard clear statements . . . that Russian authorities did not intervene [in the US election], and he accepted these declarations.”
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Trump “opened the meeting with President Putin by raising the concerns of the American people regarding Russian interference in the 2016 election.
“They had a very robust and lengthy exchange on the subject. The President pressed President Putin on more than one occasion regarding Russian involvement.”
He said it was not clear whether the two countries would ever come to an agreement on what happened.
Other topics discussed during their meeting — which lasted more than two hours, longer than originally planned — included the war in Syria, terrorism and cybersecurity.
After their meeting it was announced that America, Russia and Jordan have agreed to put in place a ceasefire across southwestern Syria from later today.
Tillerson said the aim is to reduce violence in an area of Syria near Jordan’s border that is critical to the US ally’s security. It’s a “very complicated part of the Syrian battlefield.”