W. German Police Clash With Nuclear Protesters; 180 Jailed

Protesters hurling rocks and gasoline bombs set fire to cars and to a water cannon in clashes with police Saturday as more than 50,000 people demonstrated nationwide against nuclear power.

Police in riot gear fired water cannon and tear gas at violent protesters outside a new nuclear power plant at Brokdorf, in northern West Germany, and at Wackersdorf, in the south, where a nuclear waste reprocessing plant is under construction, a police spokesman said.

Police reported 180 arrests and 29 injuries at those two sites. There were 40,000 demonstrators in Brokdorf and 10,000 in Wackersdorf, where the protest had been forbidden by a Bavarian state court.

The demonstrations were the most violent in West Germany since mid-May, when more than 150 police and dozens of demonstrators were injured at Wackersdorf in three days of protests.

The worst clashes were reported about six miles from the Brokdorf plant, where demonstrators, backed up in traffic in the village of Kleve, left their own cars and burned automobiles parked nearby. Thirty people were arrested.

Police made 100 more arrests during the demonstration at the Brokdorf plant, where militants threw rocks and Molotov cocktails at police and were answered with water cannon and tear gas. Earlier Saturday, police said, they had arrested 20 people bound for Brokdorf with firearms and clubs in their possession.

The plant had been scheduled to start operations this month, but the opening was delayed after the April 26 explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Soviet Union.

In Wackersdorf, protesters tried to saw through a fence surrounding the construction site and threw Molotov cocktails at police.