Germany: Police prepare for coal mine protest clearance | DW News |

Police on Tuesday began breaking down barricades and forcibly removing climate activists staging a sit-in protest against the expansion of a coal mine, highlighting tensions over Germany's environmental policy amid an energy crisis.

Several hundred climate activists tried to prevent heavy machinery from reaching the abandoned village of Lützerath in North Rhine-Westphalia by constructing barricades and digging trenches to halt police in their tracks.

Activists have occupied the remaining buildings in the village to the west of Cologne and near the Dutch border on the face of the opencast lignite mine -- long scheduled for demolition and cleared of residents -- for almost two years.