Police arrested 105 persons, 74 of them described as rightwing extremists, on a day of marches and counter- demonstrations in the southern German town of Wunsiedel Saturday to mark the seventh anniversary of the death of Nazi leader Rudolf Hess. Police said most of the arrests were on grounds of wearing banned Nazi symbols, carrying tear gas or other weapons or violating a ban on face scarves for the march. As in past years, Wunsiedel became an ideological battleground, with an estimated 3,800 neo-Nazis from around Germany descending on the town where Hess is buried, with some 500 counter-demonstrators staging their own march to protest against the rightwingers. Police were out in large numbers to keep the two groups apart and officials reported no major incidents. Officials reported brief scuffles between leftist groups and the neo-Nazis, but police quickly intervened to separate the groups. The counter-demonstrators had gathered under the slogan "Wunsiedel is colourful - not brown", a reference to the colour of the Nazis' shirts. --more 2334 Local Time 2034 GMT
