ST. PAUL, Minn. -- Protesters smashed windows, punctured car tires and threw bottles Monday, a violent counterpoint to an otherwise peaceful anti-war march to the site of the Republican National Convention. Police used pepper spray in confrontations with demonstrators and arrested 13.
The protesters, many clad in black and identifying themselves to reporters as anarchists, wrought havoc away from the antiwar march by damaging property and setting at least one fire. Most of the violence was in pockets near downtown, several blocks from Xcel Energy Center where the convention was taking place.
Police estimates of the crowd shifted several times during the event, ranging from 2,000 to 10,000. The crowd was clearly in the thousands. Late Monday afternoon, long after the antiwar marchers had dispersed, police requested and got 150 Minnesota National Guard soldiers to help control splinter groups near downtown.
Five people were arrested for lighting a trash bin on fire and pushing it into a police car, St. Paul police spokesman Tom Walsh said. Authorities didn't have immediate details on the other arrests.
The antiwar march was organized by a group called the Coalition to March on the RNC and Stop the War, whose leaders said they hoped for a peaceful, family-friendly event. But police were on high alert after months of preparations by a self-described anarchist group called the RNC Welcoming Committee, which wasn't among the organizers of the march.
About 20 people dressed in black tried to block the intersection of St. Peter and Exchange streets. Police quickly dispersed the group, then shot two tear gas canisters at them as the fled.
Pictures taken by Associated Press photographers showed officers using pepper spray on people who appeared to be trying to block streets.
Up to 200 people from a group called Funk the War noisily staged their own march. Wearing black clothes, bandanas and gas masks, some of their members smashed windows of cars and stores. They tipped over newspaper boxes, pulled a big trash bin into the street, bent the rearview mirrors on a bus and flipped heavy stone garbage bins on the sidewalks.
One member of the group carried a yellow flag with the motto "Don't Tread on Me." The group chanted: "Whose streets? Our streets!"
At one point, people pushed a trash bin filled with trash and threw garbage in the streets and at cars. They also took down orange detour road signs. One of them used a screwdriver to puncture the back tire of a limousine waiting at an intersection and threw a wooden board at the vehicle, denting its side. Another hurled a glass bottle at a charter bus that had stopped at an intersection. The bottle smashed into pieces but didn't appear to damage the bus.
Terry Butts, a former Alabama Supreme Court justice who is a convention delegate, was on a bus taking delegates to the arena when a brick through the window sprayed glass on him and two others. Butts said he wasn't hurt.
"It just left us a little shaken," he said. "It was sort of a frightening moment because it could have been a bomb or a Molotov cocktail."
The unrest was in stark contrast to the mostly peaceful march unfolding just blocks away.
"No more war!" the crowd chanted repeatedly as they walked an authorized parade route that ran from the state Capitol to a corner opposite the convention arena and then back to the Capitol.
While the message focused on ending the war, the crowd itself encompassed about every left-leaning coalition imaginable. Supporters of Sen. Barack Obama, activists trying to stop genocide in Darfur, advocates for illegal immigrants and Sept. 11 conspiracy theorists were all in the crowd.
Everyone from college students to husbands and wives in their 60s and young mothers pushing babies in strollers held signs and shouted chants.
As the march slowly ended, it took on more of a parade-like feel than an electricity-charged protest. Marchers sang and danced with carnival-like music in the background as they made the turn by the Xcel Energy Center and headed back to the Capitol. There were few signs of tension or anger.
Demi Miller, a coordinator of a group trained to defuse confrontations, said apart from violence by self-identified anarchists, the march was peaceful.
Miller, a St. Paul resident who wore a bright yellow hat and vest printed with "Peace Team," blamed any problems on the passion many people feel against the war in Iraq.
"People are very, very upset and eager to end this war in whatever way," he said.
Despite the violence, march organizer Jess Sundin said she believed the event was a success.
"We had an amazing group that really reflected the diversity of the people who are against this war," she said.
Sundin said she was disappointed that some outside of the official march caused trouble.
"Our group stayed very focused on the war and the need to stop it," she said.
Organizers had hoped 50,000 people would turn out for the march. One of the largest rallies in the Twin Cities in recent history was a 2006 immigration rights protest in Minneapolis that drew about 35,000.
Metro Transit has temporarily suspended bus service into and out of downtown St. Paul Monday afternoon due to traffic congestion caused by RNC protests.
The area affected is just east of Rice Street, south of University Avenue, north of Kellogg Boulevard and west of Lafayette Road.
Metro Transit officials did not say when the bus serice will be restored.
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