Berlin Leftists’ March Turns Violent : May Day: Demonstrators burn cars, smash windows. Banners cite L.A. riots, but protesters stress local issues.

A May Day demonstration of more than 10,000 leftists and anarchists turned violent Friday as youths broke away from the main march and set cars on fire and smashed shop windows in Berlin’s Kreuzberg neighborhood.

A police spokesman said late Friday evening that more than 100 had been arrested but that some groups, including hundreds of young men from the city’s large Turkish minority community, were still on the streets engaged in sporadic clashes with law enforcement officers.

There were some injuries, but police said they had no concrete figures.

The neighborhood’s May Day demonstrations have frequently turned violent in recent years.

Some of the banners carried by protesters praised the convulsion of violence that has gripped Los Angeles since Wednesday.

“We Congratulate Los Angeles,” read one sign.

Another, tied to a flagpole in the square where the demonstration ended, said, in English, “L.A. Goes Berlin.”

Although the rioting in Los Angeles has been shown prominently on German television news and awareness of the California events is high here, police tended to dismiss speculation that the L.A. violence triggered the actions here.

“Those who are on the street would certainly take heart from what’s happened in Los Angeles, but we haven’t gotten a lot more people out tonight than we expected,” said police spokesman Hans-Eberhardt Schultz. “That hasn’t played a major role here.”

Despite the banners, several demonstrators who were interviewed also tended to reject any connection with Los Angeles.

“That’s pure racism,” commented one leather-jacketed youth firmly grasping a half-empty beer bottle. “What’s going on here is completely different.”

Some spoke of local concerns such as the lack of housing and jobs.

Another said he was against plans that would turn Kreuzberg, traditionally the home of the city’s so-called alternative scene, into a government quarter when the German federal government transfers its seat here from Bonn toward the end of the 1990s.

The violence in western Berlin was confined to a relatively small area of several blocks where police and demonstrators clashed violently in the early afternoon.

After groups of youths turned over cars and began setting them afire, helmeted police, armed with heavy truncheons and tear gas, broke up the attacks.

By evening, most of the demonstrators had broken up into small groups, occasionally taunting the police into charging, firing tear gas and making a few arrests.

Broken bottles, rocks and other debris littered the streets. Tear gas lingered in the air.

An estimated 4,000 police were deployed to contain the violence.

In the eastern part of the city known as Prenzlauer Berg, groups of anarchists clashed with police after they tried to break up a demonstration by about 100 members of a right-wing extremist group, the Free Workers Party.

Several were injured in the scuffles.

Clashes between protesters and police also marred May Day demonstrations in Zurich, Switzerland, and the Austrian city of Linz.