Anti-Islam protests in Dresden, Prague and other European cities

Germany's anti-Islam PEGIDA movement staged rallies in several cities across Europe on Saturday to protest against the arrival of hundreds of thousands of refugees from the Middle East and Africa.

The movement, whose name stands for Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West, originated in the eastern German city of Dresden in 2014, with supporters seizing on a surge in asylum seekers to warn that Germany risks being overrun by Muslims.

After almost fizzling out early last year, the movement has regained momentum amid deepening public unease over whether Germany can cope with the 1.1 million migrants who arrived in the country during 2015.

The alleged involvement of migrants in assaults on women in Cologne on New Year's Eve has also spurred PEGIDA, which says it is proof that German Chancellor Angela Merkel's welcoming stance to refugees is flawed.

"We must succeed in guarding and controlling Europe's external borders as well as its internal borders once again," PEGIDA member Siegfried Daebritz told a crowd on the banks of the River Elbe who chanted "Merkel must go!".

Police in Dresden declined to estimate the number of protesters. German media put the number at up to 8,000, well below the 15,000 originally expected by police.

Hundreds of counterdemonstrators also marched through Dresden under the motto "Solidarity instead of exclusion," holding up placards saying "No place for Nazis."

Far-right groups see Europe's refugee crisis as an opportunity to broadcast their anti-immigrant message. There were 208 rallies in Germany in the last quarter of 2015, up from 95 a year earlier, Interior Ministry data showed.

Protests also took place on Saturday in other cities, including Amsterdam, Prague and the English city of Birmingham.

In Calais, in northern France, more than a dozen people were arrested during a protest that was attended by more than a hundred people despite being banned, local authorities said.

Thousands of refugees fleeing war and poverty in Africa and the Middle East camp out in Calais, hoping for a chance to make the short trip across the English Channel to Britain.

In Prague, an estimated 2,200 people including both supporters and opponents of Pegida held a series of rival demonstrations around the Czech capital. Police had to intervene in one march when supporters of refugees came under attack from around 20 people who threw bottles and stones.

In Warsaw, hundreds of people waved Polish flags and chanted "England and France are in tears, that's how tolerance ends."

"We're demonstrating against the Islamization of Europe, we're demonstrating against immigration, against an invasion," Robert Winnicki, leader of Poland's far-right Ruch Narodowy (National Movement), told demonstrators.

The Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland have together taken a tough stance, largely opposing taking in any significant numbers of refugees.

Reuters