Police injured in clashes with protesters at G8

HEILIGENDAMM, Germany, June 6 (Reuters) Around 10,000 anti-capitalist protesters clashed with police today, injuring eight, as they tried to blockade routes to a summit of major powers in northern Germany.

Police used water cannons to push back demonstrators.

Delegates from several G8 countries said the protests were limiting their ability to move around at the summit venue, a seaside resort on Germany's Baltic coast.

Eight officers were injured during the clashes with protesters near the town of Bad Doberan, police spokesman Luedger Behrens said.

Police ''used water cannons twice after demonstrators bombarded police with stones,'' he said.

Police said 15 protesters had been detained.

Protesters were trying to block access to a luxury hotel on the coast in Heiligendamm where G8 leaders including US President George W Bush were gathering.

By late afternoon, all three roads leading into Heiligendamm were blocked off by protesters and police in full riot gear wielding transparent shields lined the entrance to the town.

German NDR public radio said the only way into Heiligendamm was via boat or helicopter.

''We're stuck here now. The whole place looks shut down,'' an official from one of the delegations said by telephone from inside the summit venue.

Akie Abe, wife of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, was forced to cancel a planned tour of the nearby Baltic resort town of Kuehlungsborn today because of the demonstrations.

Dozens of protesters had earlier blocked a steam train being used to shuttle journalists between the summit venue and the media centre in Kuehlungsborn.

Organisers tried to arrange a boat transfer along the coast for the journalists as an alternative, but protesters briefly blocked access to that as well.

SECURITY FENCE Some 16,000 security personnel are in the area. World leaders are shielded from thousands of demonstrators by a 12-km fence topped with barbed wire.

Behrens said roughly 10,000 demonstrators were violating a ban on demonstrations in the area and risked being detained.

Several hooded and masked protesters had clippers and were cutting through barbed wire police had laid near the fence.

The Federal Constitutional Court, Germany's highest court, ruled against plans for a demonstration on Thursday outside the fence. But with some protesters already at the fence that decision had been made largely irrelevant.

A German court handed down jail sentences to several protesters after clashes with police on Saturday in the nearby city of Rostock in which almost 1,000 people were injured.

A German man and a Spaniard were found guilty of attempted grievous bodily harm and disturbing the peace and sentenced to nine months in prison without parole, a court spokeswoman said.

A Pole was given a 6-month suspended sentence while another Spaniard was given a 10-month jail sentence.

REUTERS AM RK2110