Riots in Copenhagen: The Beautiful People are angry!

Here is an Associated Press report, posted on the CNN web site:

Police searched homes in the Danish capital on Saturday for activists involved in street clashes that began when police evicted squatters from an abandoned building that has served as a center for anarchists, leftists and punk rockers.

Two nights of violence between police and youths protesting the eviction have turned parts of the Danish capital into a battlefield strewn with burning cars and shattered glass.

Two new demonstrations started Saturday afternoon, with hundreds of people marching peacefully toward Copenhagen's main square, Danish media reported.

As the smoke and tear gas cleared Saturday morning, police said 188 people were arrested overnight, bringing the total number of arrests to about 400 since the riots started on Thursday.

"In the last 10 years we haven't had riots like we've seen in the past two days," police spokesman Flemming Steen Munch said. He said police performed house searches early Saturday in "many places" in Copenhagen to track down activists, but declined to give details.

Vandals covered Copenhagen's famed Little Mermaid statue with pink paint. It was not clear whether the riots were linked with the defacement of the statue, which in the past has been beheaded and doused in paint and been blown off her perch by vandals who used explosives.

Police said foreign activists from Sweden, Norway and Germany joined hundreds of Danish youth, hurling cobblestones at riot police and setting cars on fire. In a sign the Danish youth expected foreign help, the Web page of "Ungdomshuset," or the youth house, posted a warning in English that Danish police had increased border controls.

"This is a display of anger and rage after more than seven years of struggle to keep what is ours," Jan, a 22-year-old activist who said he has been coming to the building for the last 10 years, told The Associated Press by telephone. He declined to give his last name, saying that was the norm among the people frequenting the building.

The eviction had been planned since last year, when courts ordered the squatters to hand the building over to a Christian congregation that bought it six years ago.

The squatters refused to leave, saying the city had no right to sell the building, which has hosted concerts with performers like Australian Nick Cave and Icelandic singer Bjork. They have demanded another building for free as a replacement.

Authorities say it has also been a staging point for numerous left-wing demonstrations that turned violent in recent years.

The clashes were Denmark's worst since May 18, 1993, when police fired into a crowd of rioters protesting the outcome of a European Union referendum. Ten of the protesters were wounded.

Justice Minister Lene Espersen urged the protesters "to regain their composure."

Sympathy protests were held in Hamburg, northern Germany, and in Norway, Sweden and Finland.