Coronavirus: Berlin breaks up 600-strong party over Covid

Covid is also taking its toll of German Christmas markets

Police in Berlin have broken up a 600-strong party as coronavirus restrictions continue to curb German festivities.

Berlin police tweeted that the "fetish party" in the capital "probably ended unsatisfactorily" for the attendees. The venue was too small for the crowd to socially distance, they said.

Like many countries in Europe, Germany is battling a rise in infections.

Frankfurt has become the latest city to cancel its famed Christmas market.

Germany has fared better than the other heavily populated nations in Europe but Sunday was the fourth day in a row that it registered more than 10,000 new cases. The total is now more than 430,000 since the pandemic began.

More than 10,000 people have died with the virus in the country.

Frankfurt has now joined Berlin, Düsseldorf and Cologne in cancelling or scaling back Christmas markets. Munich and Nuremberg still plan to go ahead.

Germany has 2,500 of them normally, and Frankfurt usually attracts more than two million visitors.

"Our goal remains to avoid another lockdown," Frankfurt mayor Peter Feldmann said in a statement.

Tickets for the open-air Berlin party in the Mitte district had to be bought in advance, with a maximum of 250 people allowed.

But the event was shut when far more party-goers turned up, many of them not wearing masks.

Elsewhere in Germany, the Robert Koch Institute for disease control was attacked on Saturday night when "incendiary devices" and bottles were thrown at the building, causing a small fire and broken windows.

Police have launched an investigation into attempted arson and are not ruling out a political motive due to the institute's importance in reporting on the pandemic.

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