According to Agence France-Presse, a number of people were injured in violent clashes that took place yesterday, Saturday, between German police and demonstrators defending the environment at the site of the largest open-pit mine in Germany.
Hundreds of people gathered - in clear defiance of judicial orders for them to leave the place - despite the rain and darkness surrounding the mine located near the village of Lutserat in the west of the country.
The protests included 15,000 people, according to the police, and about 35,000, according to the organizers, and groups of activists tried to approach a prohibited and dangerous area on Saturday, according to the police.
A police spokesman confirmed that "the security forces had to use water cannons, and are still trying to prevent the demonstrators from reaching, and they are behaving violently."
Paramedic Bert Schramm said that at least 20 activists were taken to hospital, noting that some of them were "beaten by police in the stomach and head" and sustained injuries that "could endanger their lives."
abandoned over the past years
The village of Lutserrat, located in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, had a population of about 100 people, but the people abandoned it during the past years, amid ambiguity about a plan to evacuate them to expand the nearby Garzweiler coal mine.
Since October 2022 - which coincides with the date of the last farmer's departure from the village - about a thousand activists have flocked to it, seeking to prevent it from becoming a coal mine.
Environmental groups had hoped that Lutserrat would survive the excavations after Chancellor Olaf Schultz's government, with the participation of the Green Party, took office in December 2021 and promised to phase out coal use.
And the Russian war in Ukraine caused an energy crisis that forced Berlin to restart coal facilities to meet energy demand in Germany, and in the context of its search for energy sources in the wake of Russia's reduction in supplies, the Schultz government granted permission to the "RWA" company (RWA) to expand the mine adjacent to Lutserat.