Protesters clashed with riot police and destroyed a hotel in Strasbourg during NATO's 60th anniversary summit, leaving at least 10 people injured, the French government said Saturday. Despite a 10,000-strong deployment of security forces, protesters managed to set fire to a hotel near the Rhine bridge where US and French presidents Barack Obama and Nicolas Sarkozy had assembled earlier for a photocall. Hardcore anarchist groups, calling themselves Black Blocks, splintered off from the main body of protesters, which numbered 30,000 according to organizers and 10,000 according to police. Firefighters intervened to put out flames at the Ibis hotel set ablaze by protesters. A second hotel was also attacked. Six demonstrators and one police officer joined three officers who suffered injuries on Friday, Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie told France 3 television. Volunteer medical teams attached to the march claimed that protesters had been injured by rubber bullets, with one hospitalised among 20 casualties. Some 100 masked demonstrators armed with metal bars also wrecked a chapel and other buildings at the French end of the Europe bridge connecting Strasbourg with Germany. The tension saw a planned visit to a cancer research centre for spouses including Michelle Obama and Carla Bruni-Sarkozy scrapped and replaced by a museum and cathedral tour. Anti-US/NATO violence in Turkey Several thousand leftists staged anti-US and anti-NATO protests in Turkey on Saturday, with shouts of “Yankee Go Home!” the day before President Barack Obama's visit. “Obama don't come! We don't want you!” the protesters shouted in the Turkish capital as riot police blocked the streets to contain the crowds. Obama was scheduled to arrive in Ankara on Sunday. Turkish television footage of southeast Turkey showed hundreds of Kurdish protestors throwing stones at police and soldiers preventing around 3,000 people from going to the village of imprisoned Kurdish rebel chief Abdullah Ocalan to mark his 60th birthday.
