ERKELENZ (dpa-AFX) - Police continued to evacuate the lignite village of Lützerath, which was occupied by activists. Emergency forces entered a homestead on Thursday morning, a dpa reporter reported. They sawed a hole in a gate and thus gained access. A large yellow banner with the inscription "1.5°C means: Lützerath remains!" hangs on the homestead. Some activists who were inside were taken away. A little later, police drove a cherry picker into the courtyard of the homestead. "The eviction continues," said a police spokesman.

The eviction had begun the day before, with a large contingent of police on duty. The homestead is to be demolished in order to be able to extract the coal deposits underneath. Climate activists want to prevent this.

A dpa reporter reported a largely quiet night. At one point Wednesday night, he said, a few firecrackers were thrown and fireworks rockets were set off from an occupied building; no one was injured. Meanwhile, not far away, police took a group of climate activists off a warehouse roof.

Elsewhere, police spent several hours during the night freeing a female activist from a wrecked car that had been set up as an obstacle on a path. The woman had entrenched herself in the wreckage and cemented her feet into the path. She was extricated in the early morning hours.

The bad weather made life difficult for the remaining activists: There was continuous rain and strong winds. "We hope that the storm will not get any stronger," said a spokeswoman for the initiative "Lützerath lebt" on Thursday morning. The situation is dangerous for people in the tree houses, for example, she said. "Normally, they come down during storms," she said. Climate activists continue to hold out in the tree houses and in occupied buildings. It is unclear how many there are. The spokeswoman did not provide any details.

The village in the Rhineland area is now completely surrounded by a double fence. The fence is almost finished, only the gates are still missing, said a spokesman for energy company RWE on Thursday morning. The gates should be hung in the course of the day. RWE had begun erecting the approximately two-meter-high structure on Wednesday to mark the village as a company site. Unauthorized persons should be prevented from entering the locality.

As soon as police have declared individual areas cleared, excavators are to begin "orderly deconstruction" - demolition. "When that will be, we don't know," the RWE spokesman said. "Safety for everyone involved is our absolute priority."

The "Lützerath unräumbar" alliance announced protest actions such as sit-in blockades in the area for Thursday. Fridays for Future wanted to demonstrate nationwide on the second day of the eviction. For example, an appearance by Luisa Neubauer was planned in the Erkelenz district of Keyenberg, four kilometers from Lützerath.

Before the start of the eviction on Wednesday, massive resistance had been expected. Observers, however, spoke on the first day of a partly relaxed atmosphere. At the start of the eviction, however, there were also scuffles. According to police, a Molotov cocktail, stones and pyrotechnics were thrown in the direction of the officers. A spokeswoman for the initiative "Lützerath lebt" accused the police of an overly harsh deployment.

Meanwhile, Aachen's police chief Dirk Weinspach defended the actions of the police. The strategy had borne fruit, and communication had succeeded in getting more than 200 demonstrators to leave the area voluntarily, Weinspach told the ZDF "Morgenmagazin" on Thursday. Some situations during the evacuation could be defused by talking to each other, he said. It is always good to rely on the word as the first means of intervention, he said. "We will continue to do that," Weinspach said.

At the same time, the police chief spoke of violence on the part of the activists on Wednesday, which, however, had not been decisive. The scene that was ready to use violence was in the minority, he said. The number of those willing to commit violent crimes is in the "lower two-digit range."/wdw/amr/DP/tih