Hamburg is bracing itself for an escalation of violence on the eve of Friday and Saturday’s G20 summit after a fleet of hi-tech water cannons was used to disperse crowds partying near the conference venue, and police warned that protesters could be hoarding weapons at secret locations across the city. Authorities in Germany’s second-largest city are preparing for the arrival of an unprecedented lineup of controversial world leaders including Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, as well as thousands of international protesters ranging from anti-capitalist activists to middle-class families keen to voice dissent.

Police say they expect a core of about 5,000 violent protesters to gather in the city’s historic port area for a “Welcome to Hell” march just as world leaders and international delegates start arriving at Hamburg airport on Thursday afternoon.

The Hamburg police chief, Ralf Martin Meyer, expressed concerns that the city would see “not just sit-in protests but massive assaults”, as anarchists from Scandinavia, Switzerland and Italy joined up with local activists in a city with a long tradition of leftwing protest and annual May Day riots. In the run-up to the summit, German police have seized knives, baseball bats and containers presumed to be filled with flammable liquid and unknown chemicals from various locations in and around Hamburg. Jan Hieber, a senior officer, said police had probably only found a small proportion of the weapons that had been stockpiled for use in the protests.(Theguardian)…[+]