Police officers injured as vehicles are set ablaze and streets blocked by burning tyres in clashes ahead of Mario Draghi speech

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

Dozens of police officers have been injured and hundreds of people detained after anti-austerity protesters clashed with riot police near the new headquarters of the European Central Bank (ECB) in Frankfurt.

At least seven police cars were set on fire as streets were barricaded at the “Blockupy” demonstration to mark the opening of the billion-euro building on Wednesday morning.

Polizei Frankfurt (@Polizei_Ffm) Hier ein Video, das die Angriffe auf das 1.Polizeirevier #Frankfurt zeigt und selbsterklärend ist #18M #18nulldrei pic.twitter.com/cplhoqPFW4

Some protesters said they were injured when police used pepper spray. At least 350 people were held by police, according to the German news site Deutsche Welle.

Police used water cannon to try to make a path through the mass of black-clad protesters to the entrance of the building. The new building was targeted because the ECB has come to symbolise spending cuts and market reforms of the kind being forced on Greece.

The German justice minister, Heiko Maas, said that “everyone has the right to criticise institutions like the ECB. But pure rioting goes beyond all limits in the battle for political opinion.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Demonstrators dressed as clowns pass by a burning police car during the Frankfurt protests. Photograph: Michael Probst/AP

Hundreds of officers ringed the ECB. The inauguration ceremony took place as planned, with the ECB president, Mario Draghi, thanking guests “for being here despite the difficult situation outside”.

He said the new headquarters for the currency union’s central bank was “a symbol of what Europe can achieve together”.

“European unity is being strained,” Draghi said, according to an advance text quoted by Reuters. “People are going through very difficult times. There are some, like many of the protesters outside today, who believe the problem is that Europe is doing too little.

“But the euro area is not a political union of the sort where some countries permanently pay for others.”

The Blockupy alliance estimated that about 10,000 demonstrators were at the rally. They included trade unions and Germany’s Left party.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A police vehicle is parked near the European Central Bank building. Photograph: Wolfgang Rattay/Reuters

“Our protest is against the ECB, as a member of the troika, that, despite the fact that it is not democratically elected, hinders the work of the Greek government. We want the austerity politics to end,” Ulrich Wilken, one of the organiser told Reuters.

The Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, last week criticised ECB policy towards Athens as “asphyxiating”, a criticism also made by the protest organisers.