Videos were broadcast online showing people breaking shop windows
Berlin:
Hundreds of people sparked riots early in the morning on Sundays in downtown Stuttgart, thrown stones and bottles at the police, and ransacked shops after breaking shop windows.
"The police are currently securing evidence and interrogating more than 20 people who have been arrested," said a statement by the authorities in the southwestern city.
More than a dozen police officers were also injured in the clashes.
"I strongly condemn this brutal outbreak of violence. These acts against people and things are criminal acts that must be violently persecuted and convicted," said Prime Minister of Baden-Württemberg Winfried Kretschmann in a statement.
The region's interior minister, Thomas Strobl, said the riots were "unprecedented in nature".
Sascha Binder, a leading local MP for the Social Democratic Party, previously described the violence as "scenes similar to civil war".
Shortly after midnight, tensions broke out over police controls on drug use by people who had gathered near the city's largest square, Schlossplatz.
Then there were clashes as the groups on the edge of the rampage smashed windows with sticks or sticks from police vehicles parked in the area.
The police estimated that around 500 people were involved in the uprising, which also ransacked shops along neighboring Königsstrasse, an important shopping street.
The police requested reinforcements and could only suppress the violence a few hours later.
Videos posted on Twitter showed people breaking shop windows and leaving goods scattered on the streets.
According to the regional broadcaster SWR, a jewelry store was completely emptied and a cell phone shop was destroyed.
Small clashes between the police and groups of young people broke out in the city center last week.
(Except for the headline, this story was not edited by NDTV staff and published from a syndicated feed.)
