Battle in Berlin Streets : Troops Drive Radicals From Tenements

Thousands of riot troops backed by bulldozers and armored trucks stormed a barricaded neighborhood today, smashing a defiant community of anarchists in the heart of Berlin.

Today’s confrontation was the third in three days on Mainzer Street, in what was formerly East Berlin, and is the latest example of lawlessness in the former East Germany, once strictly controlled by Communist rulers.

As many as 3,000 police, many of them paramilitary units brought in from other German states, moved in after daybreak to seize heavily fortified streets in the area, where leftist radicals had taken up positions.

Commuters watched as officers burst through the makeshift barriers and battled for hours before driving hundreds of the radicals from a row of tenements.

Armored personnel carriers and bulldozers burst through several barricades and officers used clubs, water cannons and tear gas in pitched battles with the radicals.

Radicals fired flare guns and threw rocks and firebombs from rooftops and windows. The battle spilled onto several streets, and an adjoining six-lane thoroughfare was closed to traffic.

At least 300 people were arrested, and five officers were injured, a police official said. He had no figures for the number of injured anarchists.

Later, about 50,000 people marched through eastern Berlin denouncing the police raid and demanding affordable housing. Many residents of eastern Berlin now get rent subsidies, a practice that will soon end.

After the fighting, Mainzer Street was filled with smoldering debris--spent tear-gas canisters, junked cars and furniture that had been hurled from windows. Much of the street was torn up by the radicals, who used its cobblestones as weapons.

“And now, our street is kaput,” said Waetroud Goets, 59, after the fighting spread to the block where she lived for 30 years. “I never had any trouble with these people, but as soon as the police showed up, they started throwing rocks.”

Most of the radicals involved in the fighting were anarchists from the former West Berlin. Hundreds of radicals have taken over abandoned row houses in eastern Berlin and have built encampments on vacant land where the Berlin Wall once stood.