DRESDEN, Feb 13: Thousands of right-wing extremists rallied in Dresden, eastern Germany, on Sunday to draw attention to "British-US crimes" on the 60th anniversary of the Allied bombing here.

Some 3,000 to 4,000 people, according to police, gathered near the Semperoper opera house amid a flood of black, white and red flags, an AFP correspondent said. Police were out in force, with several dozen vehicles parked nearby, in case of clashes with leftists, who were planning a counter-demonstration later in the day.

Many of the right-wingers, who came in support of the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party (NPD), were young and wore black. Some carried banners marked "We won't forget and we won't forgive", or "The media and television lie."

One flag showed the face of a soldier with the words "They were the world's best soldiers" written in gothic lettering. Nationalist songs and music by Wagner and Bach trumpeted from loudspeakers.

Some 35,000 people were killed on February 13, 1945 when around 1,000 Allied aircraft bombed the city, officially to cause chaos and help the Red Army as it closed in on the eastern front.

At a podium, NPD regional head Holger Apfel complained that the German state had created a distinction between "first and second class victims" of the war. To loud applause, another speaker railed against "the mafia of journalists" who had come to cover the rally, the correspondent said. The anti-immigration NPD won seats to the Saxony state parliament in elections last September. -AFP