Eviction of activists from German mining village continues

German police continued to evict climate activists from the contested mining village of Lützerath on Thursday, after they began clearing the site in western Germany a day earlier, reported dpa.

"The eviction continues," a police spokesperson said. The police called on activists to leave the area via loudspeaker.

The deserted hamlet in the Rhineland area is now completely surrounded by a double, 2-metre high fence put up by energy company RWE, which plans to mine the site for lignite, or brown coal.

The fence is almost finished, only the gates are missing, an RWE spokesperson said on Thursday.

The tiny abandoned village, some 40 kilometres west of Cologne, has become the latest flashpoint in a long-running battle between climate protesters - who are demanding a radical rethink of the government's climate change policies - and authorities.

There were scuffles when police entered Lützerath early on Wednesday to clear the site, after the failure of a last-ditch legal effort by protesters to halt the operation.

Police said stones and Molotov cocktails were thrown at security forces as the operation kicked off.

But protests remained mostly peaceful on the first day and night of the operation, police said on Thursday.

Security forces began removing activists from trees and platforms, sometimes using lifting platforms. At the entrance to Lützerath, excavators began demolition work.

Rain and hard winds have created a difficult situation for the remaining activists.

"We hope that the storm will not get any stronger," said a spokeperson of the action group Lützerath Lebt (Lützerath Lives). She pointed out that the bad weather was dangerous for the people in the tree houses, for example.

Residents left the village near the town of Erkelenz long ago. But activists have occupied several barricaded buildings there for months and their numbers have swelled in recent weeks. Police said there were 27 tree houses.

Some 200 activists left the site voluntarily on Wednesday, according to Aachen police chief Dirk Weinspach. According to police estimates from Tuesday, about 300 protesters were staying in Lützerath.

RWE and the German government agreed last year to bring forward a planned coal power phase-out by eight years, to 2030, but the deal did not save Lützerath.

The government says that until that date, coal will still be needed to ensure the security of Germany's energy supply given the market turmoil prompted by Russia's war against Ukraine.