Fifty-nine people were arrested and nearly 100 police officers injured in violent clashes during a pro-Palestinian protest in Berlin on Saturday, police said on Sunday.
To read also: "Behind the support of the extreme left to the Palestinian people hides a latent anti-Semitism"
About 3,500 people gathered in the Neukoelln neighborhood on Saturday afternoon for one of the many rallies dedicated to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, police said.
Protesters threw stones, bottles and fireworks when police attempted to disperse them using pepper spray.
93 police officers were injured.
Some 900 agents were deployed to several protests in the German capital on Saturday, the rest being largely peaceful.
Escalating violence between Israel and the Palestinians has sparked several protests in Germany in recent days. Protesters shouted anti-Semitic slogans, burned Israeli flags and damaged the entrance to a synagogue with throwing stones. The chairman of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Josef Schuster, urged the police to take a hard line against anti-Semitism and said recent events
"were reminiscent of the darkest periods in German history".
Home Secretary Horst Seehofer said on Sunday that Germany would crack down on anyone who spread the
"Anti-Semitic hatred".
"We will not tolerate Israeli flags burning on German soil and attacking Jewish institutions
," he told the
Bild am Sonntag
newspaper
.
The Jewish community in Germany has grown since reunification in 1990, with the arrival of hundreds of thousands of Jews from the former Soviet Union.
The arrival of refugees from Arab countries hostile to Israel in 2015 and 2016 added to the anti-Semitism present in certain Muslim circles in the country.
