ERKELENZ (dpa-AFX) - Aachen police and the district of Heinsberg plan to provide information on Tuesday about the planned eviction of the hamlet of Lützerath and the police operation at the Garzweiler open-pit lignite mine in western North Rhine-Westphalia. The hamlet, now occupied by climate activists in the territory of the city of Erkelenz, is to be demolished in order to extract the lignite underneath. The activists want to prevent this. The small hamlet, which borders directly on the large, gray hole, has therefore come to some notoriety.

The information event is an offer to talk to the citizens of Erkelenz, a town of 43,000 inhabitants, but also to initiatives and activists operating there. Aachen's police chief Dirk Weinspach and district administrator Stephan Pusch (CDU) will take part. Both have called for peaceful protests at the open pit mine. Aachen police are in charge of the evacuation operation.

According to police, the evacuation operation could begin on Wednesday at the earliest. First, the information event for citizens should be held, Aachen's police chief had said on Monday.

Police are planning a large-scale operation with support from all over Germany, which could last up to four weeks. The area near the open pit mine is dominated by fields and fields. Infrastructure will have to be built for an operation lasting several weeks with probably more than a thousand officers.

For the police, the operation has many unknowns. As in Hambach Forest nearby, activists have built tree houses and barricaded seven houses. Of the protest scene, a small part is ready for violence, according to police estimates. About 300 activists are in Lützerath, another 250 in a neighboring village, police said Monday. In the past, there has been repeated damage to property at the open pit mine operated by RWE, which supplies lignite for power generation.

The economics ministries led by the Greens in the federal government and North Rhine-Westphalia have agreed with RWE on a coal phase-out in the Rhineland that has been brought forward to 2030. According to the agreement, five neighboring villages threatened with demolition are to be preserved. Lützerath, however, is to make way in order to mine the underlying coal. It is needed for the energy supply, according to the energy company. Because of the current energy crisis, power generation with lignite has been expanded again./uho/DP/stk