Anti-G7 alliance carries out demonstration near meeting venue

The protester alliance "Stop G7 Elmau" launched its first major demonstration march on Friday in the Bavarian town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, about 10 km away from the meeting venue of a G7 summit, local police reported.

Police accompanied the rally and closed some roads temporarily to allow the march that went off peacefully.

After the march, protesters gathered in front of the Marshall Center for Security Studies, a German-U.S. think tank, where the strategic concepts for global military interventions are planed and developed, the protester alliance said.

Protests against the G7 summit are scheduled for June 7-8 in and around Garmisch-Partenkirchen, and about 600 activists have set up camp nearby.

"During the day, our camp is perhaps already too full. We now have about 600 people here and 1,000 it is borderline," the spokesman of the "Stop G7 Elmau" Benjamin Russ said.

According to Russ, many groups of protesters are to join them.

Germany, that holds the Group of Seven presidency this year, will host the two-day meeting with the leaders of Britain, Canada, France, Italy, Japan and the United States amid a massive police presence at Elmau Castle near the Austrian border. Endit