German police make arrests after anti-G7 demo turns violent

German police charged four protesters demonstrating against the G7 summit in southern Bavaria with causing bodily harm on Sunday, reported dpa.

The four were to appear before a court later in the day, when a judge will decide whether they are to be held in custody.

The arrests took place during clashes between demonstrators and police during a rally on Saturday in Munich, the Bavarian capital.

Police said they were investigating a total of six people in relation to the use of force against uniformed officers.

Police put the number of protesters at 4,000, while the organizers said 6,000 had turned up. Munich police deployed 3,000 officers after organizers said they expected at least 20,000 to turn out.

The organizers of a separate protest close to where the G7 leaders were meeting at Schloss Elmau, near Garmisch-Partenkirchen in the German Alps, complained about the venue allocated to them, well away from the luxury resort.

"It's not in shouting or visible distance," Franz Haslbeck of the "Stop G7 Elmau" alliance said in Garmisch-Partenkirchen on Sunday. The town lies some 80 kilometres south of Munich.

He noted that the protest site allocated was 500 metres away as the crow flies from the venue and insisted it did not comply with a previous court ruling.

Following drawn-out negotiations with the authorities protecting the summit, a group of at most 50 protesters registered by name with the police are to be driven in police vehicles to the security zone around Schloss Elmau on Monday.

Meanwhile, around 1,000 people began a protest in the southern German town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, against the G7 summit that is being held nearby in Elmau, Bavaria.

The rally was accompanied by a massive police contingent. In total, some 18,000 police officers are deployed in the region for the summit.

Sunday's demonstration focused on the climate and fears that the Ukraine war will escalate. "We will not let them destroy our planet and our future," a rally spokesperson said, in comments directed at the politicians meeting nearby.