World

Three Shot At EU Protests

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

June 15, 2001 / 8:34 PM EDT / CBS

Anti-capitalist riots swept around an EU summit here, leaving three protesters shot and wounded, 12 policemen injured and Swedish authorities under heavy fire for failing to head off the violence.

The center of the picturesque 17th-century Swedish port of Gothenburg was a near war-zone strewn with rocks, burning barricades and smashed shops after nearly 12 hours of non-stop violence into Friday night.

In the worst violence, three protesters were in a Gothenburg hospital with gunshot wounds, a spokesman told Reuters.

The protesters were believed to have been shot when trapped and outnumbered police fired in self-defense.

"Of the three, one is seriously hurt with wounds to the abdomen and is being operated on. The other two, including one with a gunshot wound to the thigh, were not seriously wounded," Pider Avall, spokesman for Sahlgrenska University Hospital, said.

Swedish Justice Minister Thomas Bodstrom said 12 police were injured in Friday's clashes which followed similar violence on Thursday when President Bush was at the summit.

"I have been told that 12 policemen have been injured, none of them seriously," Bodstrom said.

He told a news conference many protesters were from countries other than Sweden.

Up to 25,000 activists from dozens of anti-EU, anti-U.S. and anti-globalization groups have descended on Gothenburg. About 1,500 people appeared to have been involved in Friday's rioting.

Bodstrom said 600 people were detained in violence which devastated the center of Sweden's second largest city.

Bodstrom rejected criticism that police lost control of the situation. He defended the decision not to use tear gas or water cannon so far in putting down the violence.

"Police have not lost control in desperation. Obviously they have found themselves in a difficult situation," said Bodstrom, who was repeatedly questioned about why police were outnumbered and failed to take tougher action.

"We have got to find something between batons and guns and police are now looking at a middle road," Bodstrom said.

Sweden's state-run radio broadcast urgent warnings to residents to stay out of the city center.

Rioters stoned police and pulled mounted policemen off their horses, forcing the terrified animals to gallop riderless back into police lines, skidding on the cobbled streets.

Hurling rocks and fire crackers, demonstrators forced back police outnumbered about 10 to one.

Two naked women cavorted at the front of the line of protesters to provoke police. Several hundred others formed a conga line, dancing to drums to celebrate the police retreat.

Police abandoned seven vans in a side street near the university after the location was overrun by protesters, most wearing masks and black hooded coats to prevent identification.

Earlier, rioters smashed and looted shops in Gothenburg's main central district, and set a huge bonfire ablaze in the area's main avenue. The violence forced EU leaders to cancel a dinnein the city center and remain at the conference center.

Five EU delegations staying at hotels in the fashionable area were moved to safer locations.

The demonstrators, incensed by tough police action to protect the leaders who met Mr. Bush on Thursday, briefly had complete control of the central plaza.

Vandalism and pitched street battles have become a regular part of major international meetings in recent years in venues from Seattle to Prague and Nice — and now to the normally peaceful southwestern Swedish coast.

The protesters usually hail from a bevy of groups supporting a variety of causes, from anarchists to environmentalists and labor unions. The common thread is a distrust of multinational corporations and the allegedly adverse affects of free trade on workers and the earth.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said he now feared for next month's meeting of the Group of Eight industrialized nations in Italy's coastal town of Genoa.