ERKELENZ (dpa-AFX) - Police evacuations are expected to continue this Thursday at the Lützerath lignite site in the Rhineland coalfield occupied by climate activists. Aachen's police chief Dirk Weinspach said Wednesday that the real challenge still lies ahead for the police - referring to the evacuation of the seven buildings on the site.

The task force continued into the night against activists who want to prevent the mining of the coal under the site. Police officers took a good ten activists with lifting platforms from a height of about ten meters from the roof of a former agricultural hall, as a dpa reporter observed. Other officers untied an activist tied up in a wrecked car. A police spokeswoman had said earlier that this work was still being completed. Beyond that, nothing further was planned by the police during the night, she said.

The police are of course still on the scene, said a spokeswoman. However, there were no plans to evacuate houses during the night. Activists continue to stay in these houses and in self-built tree houses.

Fridays for Future activist Luisa Neubauer called the police action "absolutely incomprehensible." "Evictions at night in the dark. This is dangerous, provocative, escalating. What is this, what are you so afraid of?" she asked on Twitter.

The settlement of Lützerath is to be demolished in order to be able to extract the coal deposits underneath. Climate activists want to prevent this.

Under predominantly peaceful protest, the police had begun the eviction on Wednesday. Police officers took activists from trees and platforms, using lifting platforms at various points. At the entrance to Lützerath, there was demolition work with excavators, and one of the town signs of Lützerath was also removed.

The alliance "Lützerath unräumbar" has announced protest actions such as sit-in blockades in the area for Thursday. Fridays for Future wants to demonstrate nationwide on the second day of the eviction. Luisa Neubauer, for example, wants to speak at 10:00 in the Erkelenz district of Keyenberg, about four kilometers from Lützerath.

The police are on site in Lützerath with a large contingent. Before the start of the eviction, massive resistance had already been expected. Observers, on the other hand, spoke of a partly relaxed atmosphere on the first day. In the early hours of Wednesday morning, there were scuffles at the start of the eviction. 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.

In view of criticism from the climate movement against the Greens because of the eviction of Lützerath, Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck was concerned. "This also touches me or drives me around, just like everyone in my party," Habeck said Wednesday evening on ZDF's "heute-journal." "But nevertheless, we have to explain what is right. And right was - unfortunately - to ward off the gas shortage, an energy emergency in Germany, also with additional electricity generation from lignite - and to bring forward the coal phase-out at the back."

Lützerath is not "the carry-on of the energy policy of the past: conversion of lignite to electricity," Habeck stressed. "It's not, as is claimed, the eternal carry-on, it's the end of it." Unfortunately, he said, it was no longer possible to save the village of Lützerath - "but it is the end of lignite-fired power generation in NRW." "In that respect - with great respect to the climate movement - I think the village is the wrong symbol."

The economics ministries led by the Greens in the federal government and the state of NRW had agreed on a compromise with the energy company RWE that includes the removal of the coal under Lützerath - but also an exit from coal in NRW that is brought forward to 2030./idt/DP/stk