The German city of Dresden paid its respects on Sunday to tens of thousands of people killed in the Allied bombing 60 years ago, as far-right extremists rallied and marred the commemorations. Church services, wreath-laying ceremonies and a peace run were held, as thousands of neo-Nazis gathered under the watchful gaze of police to draw attention to the "Holocaust of bombs" dropped by the Allies.
At the Heidefriedhof cemetery, where 20,000 of the estimated 35,000 victims of the napalm-like chemical weapons are buried, ambassadors representing the Allies and political leaders laid wreaths in their memory.
Earlier, 60 athletes, one for each year, held a peace run in memory of the way the virtually defenceless city, which was packed with refugees fleeing the Red Army's advance, was destroyed by as many as 1,200 Allied aircraft.
City authorities expected 10,000 people at the grounds of the Semperoper opera building later holding candles to remember the night when Dresden burned.
Not far from the building, by the state parliament, around 5,000 neo-Nazis were separated by riot police as counter-demonstrators, many shouting "Nazis out", gathered under the slogan "No Tears for Krauts".
The commemorations this year have taken on particular meaning because a neo-Nazi political party, the National Democratic Party (NPD), recently won seats in the Saxony state parliament, of which Dresden is capital.
The NPD has been trying again to exploit the anniversary, but this year it has been able to do so from the official platform of the regional assembly.
An AFP correspondent said that many of the right-wingers were young and wore black. Some carried banners marked "We won't forget and we won't forgive", another said: "The media and television lie."
The anniversary comes at a time when ordinary Germans are cautiously re-evaluating whether they too could have been victims of the war in some cases, despite the undeniable crimes of Adolf Hitler's regime.
Besides those killed in Dresden, some 15 million Germans were later expelled from eastern Europe after World War II in revenge for Nazi crimes.
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