Clashes Mar Polish Independence Day

Polish hooligans clashed with police Tuesday on the sidelines of the nationalist right's annual march through central Warsaw to mark Poland's independence day. 

A couple of hundred people, many wearing balaclavas, hurled rocks, paving stones, flares and Molotov cocktails at police, who responded with water cannon and rubber bullets. 

Officers held up the march for around an hour on a bridge over the Vistula river in a bid to separate the demonstrators from the hooligans.

At least one officer was seriously injured and evacuated by ambulance, according to reporters on the scene.

National police spokesman Mariusz Sokolowski said around 200 people were taken in for questioning. 

Police refused to say how many people had taken part in the demonstration, but organizers put the number at several tens of thousands. 

Fighting has broken out for several years now on November 11.

Poland won back its independence in 1918 after being wiped off the map for 123 years in a three-way carve-up between Tsarist Russia, Prussia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire.