At least 98 people were arrested and 30 others injured on Friday and Saturday during the two-day European Union (EU) Summit in the Spanish port city of Barcelona, authorities said Sunday.
Barcelona police said anti-globalization protesters including Spaniards and foreign citizens clashed with the police when they rampaged through downtown Barcelona as EU leaders were meeting in a heavily guarded compound outside the city.
Tens of thousands of demonstrators from around Europe and Spain have swarmed into Barcelona to protest EU plans to liberalize energy and financial markets.
Some protesters were arrested for vandalic acts, material damage, provocation and resisting authority, the police said. Among the arrested foreigners were five Frenchmen, four Italians and three Britons.
Steel rods, Molotov cocktails, knives, bats and other weapons were confiscated from the protesters, the police said.
Seventeen policemen were injured during the two-day clashes. At the end of the summit on Saturday, some 250,000 people demonstrated against globalization under the slogan: "Against the Europe of capital and war. A different world is possible."
(Xinhua News Agency March 18, 2002)
