Thousands of Berliners have blocked a group of right-wing extremists from staging a march through the German capital.

Police say some 2,000 people stood in the way of the planned route of a demonstration organized Saturday by the far-right National Democratic Party.

The party, known by its acronym NPD, had planned to march through Berlin's Kreuzberg district, which has a large immigrant population. Germany's security services say the party has a racist, xenophobic and anti-Semitic agenda.

Police spokesman Thomas Neuendorf says the 100 far-right activists were able to proceed only for a couple of hundred meters (yards) before their path was blocked and "it's unlikely they'll get any further today."

Neuendorf says four NPD supporters and nine counter-demonstrators had been arrested by mid-afternoon.

