Anti-AfD protests sweep Germany as far right closes in on two more states

Alarm that Berlin and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania may fall next after party's Saxony-Anhalt election victory

Thousands of Germans have staged protests against the far-right Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) after the party's watershed victory in a state election, warning it posed a danger in two more polls this month.

Demonstrators at Berlin's Brandenburg Gate held a peaceful pro-democracy rally denouncing the anti-immigrant, pro-Russian AfD, which has called for mass deportations of asylum seekers and a rollback of state support for renewable energy and public broadcasting.