Giant swastika carved near Berlin airport

BERLIN, March 8 (Reuters) - Passengers on planes descending into Berlin's Tegel airport were greeted by the sight of a huge swastika scraped out of snow on a frozen lake a few kilometres from the runway, police said on Tuesday. The Nazi symbol, which is banned in Germany, was visible from planes arriving from all over Europe for most of Monday morning before water police, having tested the ice thickness, could venture out to erase it. Alerted after a pilot told the airport control tower, police in a squad car sent to the lake failed to see anything from the shore. A police helicopter later spotted the 8 by 5 metre (26 by 16 foot) swastika and sent the water police team. The suspected neo-Nazi stunt recalls an affair five years ago when a 60-by-60 metre swastika, visible only from the air, was discovered in a forest 100 km north of Berlin. A devoted Hitler follower had planted russet-coloured larch trees in 1938 which formed a swastika for a few weeks each autumn and spring as the leaves changed colour.