HAMBURG, Germany (AFX) - Police have detained 50 people after a group of Iranian opposition supporters vandalised the interior of the Iranian consulate building in Hamburg and then rioted outside.

Police said a group of about 20 exiled Iranians entered the consulate in the northern port city of Hamburg late this morning and began overturning tables and spray-painting walls red.

The rioters left of their own accord and joined with a further 30 people in throwing stones and fruit at the building and burning an Iranian flag.

They also spray-painted walls outside the consulate and nearby cars, police said.

The group was protesting a crackdown on the Iranian opposition in France and the treatment of anti-regime demonstrators in Tehran.

French anti-terrorist police today launched a major crackdown on the leading Iranian armed opposition group, the People's Mujahedeen, detaining 165 people in a series of dawn raids in the Paris region.

In Tehran, anti-regime protests led by students are continuing for the seventh night running, amid a worsening political deadlock between reformists loyal to President Mohammad Khatami and powerful hardliners.

Scores of people have been injured or detained, mainly in clashes with hardline vigilantes loyal to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

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