COPENHAGEN, Denmark — Masked demolition workers tore down the graffiti-sprayed building Monday that served as the makeshift cultural center for Denmark’s anarchists and disaffected youth, ignoring sobs and screamed obscenities from a surrounding crowd of young people.

Four days of street riots followed the owner’s decision Thursday to evict squatters from the building — officially abandoned but used by anarchists, punk rockers and left-wing groups since 1982. The violent demonstrations were Denmark’s worst in a decade and drew like-minded young people from across northern Europe, ending with more than 650 arrests and 25 injured.

Built in 1897, it was a community theater for the labor movement and a culture and conference center; Vladimir Lenin was among its visitors.

Courts ordered the squatters out by Dec. 14 after the city sold the building to a Christian congregation six years ago.

The protesters saw their fight to keep the “Youth House” as symbolic of a wider struggle against a capitalist establishment. They hurled cobblestones at riot police, set fire to cars and trash bins, and caused havoc on the usually calm Copenhagen streets.

On Monday, as dust from the demolition filled the air, a surrounding crowd yelled obscenities at police who had cordoned off the building. Others hugged and cried as workers — wearing face masks to conceal their identities — cleared debris under police control./AP

IRAQ

Suicide car bomber kills 38, injures 105 in Baghdad market

BAGHDAD — A suicide car bomber turned a venerable book market into a deadly inferno and gunmen targeted Shiite pilgrims Monday as suspected Sunni insurgents brought major bloodshed back into the lap of their main Shiite rivals. At least 38 people died in the blast and seven pilgrims were killed.

The violence — after a relative three-day lull in Baghdad — was seen as another salvo in the Sunni extremist campaign to provoke a sectarian civil war that could tear apart the Shiite-led government and erase Washington’s plans for Iraq.

The Shiite Mahdi Army militia has so far resisted full-scale retaliation through a combination of self-interest and intense government pressure. But the militia’s leader, the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, is now being cornered in new ways that have put him on the defensive.

An expected Cabinet reshuffle could take a serious bite out of al-Sadr’s voice in government — a move strongly encouraged by Washington.

Al-Sadr also opened the door for U.S. and Iraqi troops to enter the Mahdi stronghold of Sadr City in Baghdad — under a painstaking deal with authorities — but his loyalists are still being hunted outside the capital./AP

GUATEMALA

FBI asked for help in combating drug smuggling

GUATEMALA CITY  — Guatemala knows it is losing the battle against drug trafficking — its police, military and justice system are beholden to traffickers who use the country as a way station for Colombian drug shipments to the U.S.

In a case that has laid bare the extent of corruption in the Central American nation, FBI agents are trying to help discover who ordered the murders of three Salvadoran politicians and the Guatemalan police officers who said they were told to kill them.

The killings and apparent cover-up has exposed the seemingly insurmountable challenges President Oscar Berger faces as he tries to regain control of a defiant and even criminal police force.

“We were shocked by the brutality of the killings, but it was really no surprise to us that organized crime has infiltrated the government,” Vice President Eduardo Stein said.

FBI officials met with Guatemalan and Salvadoran authorities last week to discuss the case of the three slain politicians and to offer the help of six forensic scientists, who are to arrive this week. They “will help us in every aspect of the investigation, from crime scene evidence collection to the tests that we need to run,” lead prosecutor Alvaro Matus said./AP