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Blockade in Dusseldorf: Police officers try to detach activists from the asphalt

Photo: David Young / dpa

Climate activists blocked runways at airports in Hamburg and Düsseldorf on Thursday morning. Several people had glued themselves to the tarmac, the group "Last Generation" said in a press release.

Hamburg Airport wrote on Twitter in the morning that flight operations had been interrupted because unauthorized persons had gained access to the site. The extent to which air traffic was disrupted was not clear at first. Thursday is the first day of the summer holidays in Hamburg.

A spokesman for the situation center of the Hamburg police confirmed an operation at the airport. According to the group »Last Generation«, the activists gained access to the airport area via the security fence.

At the airport in Dusseldorf, according to a dpa photographer, there were six or seven people on the access road to the runway. According to their own statements, the climate activists cut through a fence to get onto the apron of the airfield. This will block the journey of the aircraft to the runway, it said. Flight operations were temporarily severely restricted, the dpa photographer said. A large number of emergency services are on site.

Blockade at BER in November

At the end of November, the group had already paralyzed BER for almost two hours. At that time, two groups, each consisting of several people, gained access to the airport grounds. Some of them had glued themselves to the ground, according to police. The group itself said that some activists rode bicycles across the site. Berlin Airport had stopped operations on both runways.

In May, members of the »Last Generation«, also parked at Berlin Brandenburg Airport, sprayed »private jets« with orange paint over a large area. The action could be seen via livestream on Twitter, among other places, and a sprayed plane is clearly visible in the video.

The group, which has recently also frequently blocked roads, is calling on the federal government to improve climate protection and demands, among other things, a speed limit of 100 kilometers per hour on motorways and a 9-euro train ticket for the whole of Germany.

SWE/DPA