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Youth protests in Ger­many turned viol­ent late on Sat­urday as thou­sands took to the streets to object to the high cost of liv­ing, pub­lic spend­ing cuts and mil­it­ary con­scrip­tion, in an echo of the unrest that swept France two weeks ago.

About 100,000 people joined protests in Ber­lin and some 30 other cit­ies, accord­ing to the events’ organ­isers.

Police in Ber­lin said pro­test­ers blocked trams, threw fire­works and bottles towards officers and spray-painted build­ings. Protests in Frank­furt and Ham­burg were stopped by the police after sim­ilar viol­ence broke out. Rioters looted shops and attacked police officers, accord­ing to local reports.

Videos on social media showed masked people break­ing into stores in Ger­many’s fin­ance centre, Frank­furt am Main.

Boris Rhein, premier of the state of Hesse, said he was “shocked by the acts of extreme viol­ence . . . incid­ents that will not go without con­sequences”.

More than 100 police officers were injured dur­ing the riots in Frank­furt. At the height of the unrest, up to 1,300 police officers were deployed in the city, accord­ing to local author­it­ies. Some 54 people, aged 13 to 29, were arres­ted.

Don­ald Trump made his final cam­paign pitch to voters in the heart of Amer­ica’s Great Plains yes­ter­day with days to go until midterm elec­tions that threaten to end Repub­lican con­trol of Con­gress in a bruis­ing rebuke to the pres­id­ent.

After mak­ing almost daily trips to battle­ground states last month to bol­ster vul­ner­able Repub­lic­ans, Trump held his final ral­lies in Iowa and Kan­sas yes­ter­day before hunk­er­ing down at the White House ahead of tomor­row’s vote.

Throughout the final stages of the cam­paign, Trump has been try­ing to shore up his pre­ferred can­did­ates in deeply con­ser­vat­ive areas, includ­ing in the rural Mid­w­est, where even some of his sup­port­ers are angry at high energy costs.

While Repub­lic­ans are widely expec­ted to lose con­trol of the House of Rep­res­ent­at­ives, Trump is des­per­ately try­ing to pre­serve his party’s major­ity in the US Sen­ate. The upper cham­ber seemed locked in earlier this year but is now at risk as the pres­id­ent’s pop­ular­ity has con­tin­ued to fall across the coun­try.

“I feel very good. I mean, I feel like we’re doing well,” Trump told report­ers in Flor­ida on Sat­urday ahead of his final day on the cam­paign trail. “The coun­try has never done bet­ter,” he added.

European cap­it­als are increas­ingly anxious about being shut out of talks to end the war in Ukraine but remain divided over how to secure a seat at the table as Don­ald Trump intens­i­fies pres­sure on Kyiv to strike a deal with Moscow.

With US-Rus­sia-Ukraine talks set to take place in Abu Dhabi, European gov­ern­ments fear decisions with far-reach­ing con­sequences for their secur­ity could be taken over their heads.

The anxi­ety promp­ted the lead­ers of Nor­way and Fin­land to arrange a call with Rus­sian Pres­id­ent Vladi­mir Putin last Tues­day without first secur­ing EU back­ing, draw­ing swift cri­ti­cism from European allies.