Hamburg police deploy water cannons against G20 protesters (PHOTOS, VIDEOS)

On Tuesday evening, police cleared tents at one of the parks in the Altona district of the city, setting up a more than one kilometer road block cordon from the Walter-Möller-Park, Sueddeutsche Zeitung reports. To clear the camp, authorities reportedly used pepper spray.

At least 15,000 police officers from all of Germany’s the federal states are being deployed to ensure public security at the G20 summit.

“We have every German special unit available to the summit,” Hamburg’s police president Ralf Meyer said Tuesday.

The Federal Criminal Police Office, (Bundeskriminalamt, BKA), is responsible for protecting the visiting leaders. Other specialized units, such as the SEK, MEK, GSG9, and the BFE in addition to a dedicated anti-terrorist division will provide security for the summit, Bild reports.

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Demonstrators had been given until the start of the week to clear out and dismantle their protest camps around the city. Most protesters refused prompting police to move in.

In an effort to make the public understand the seriousness of the threat, police released footage showing a number of homemade weapons seized by authorities in Hamburg and surrounding areas in recent weeks.

“We can assume this is only a small fraction of what is still hidden in cellars and garages around Hamburg,” Jan Hieber, the head of the city’s CID said, according to the Telegraph. “This is not a question of sit-ins, but of major attacks.”

The “militant far-left” decided “to organize the biggest black bloc of all time,” Hamburg interior minister Andy Grote claimed Tuesday in an interview with the ZDF broadcaster.

“Protest camps are permitted, but not camps in which people stay overnight,” Grote said, as quoted by the Local.

Source:rt.com