British police arrested nine people on Saturday after far-right demonstrators clashed with officers during a protest against a planned mosque in a central English town.
Police in the West Midlands region said they had deployed a “very significant” force of officers to separate 2,000 supporters of the far-right English Defence League (EDL) from 1,500 counter-protesters from the Unite Against Fascism (UAF) organisation.
The EDL, a group which stages protests against “radical Islam,” had marched to a car park on the outskirts of the town of Dudley overlooking the proposed site for a new mosque.
Scuffles broke out with police when EDL supporters broke down wire fences penning them in and ran through nearby streets.
Police said they were able to prevent them reaching the UAF rally.
Officers arrested five people for possessing offensive weapons, two for public order offences and two for criminal damage.
It was the latest confrontation between the EDL and the UAF to have ended in violence. Last month police arrested 74 people at a similar demonstration in Bolton, near the English city of Manchester.
The EDL sprang up last year after a small group from a local Muslim community staged a protest in the southern English town of Luton against soldiers returning from Iraq.