German Chancellor Angela Merkel pledged Monday to reduce a massive refugee influx but insisted on keeping the door open to the world's neediest, drawing a rousing standing ovation from her party.

After weeks of infighting over the expected arrival of around one million asylum seekers to Germany this year, Merkel appeared to unite her conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) behind a centrist line of generosity with clear limits.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel pledged Monday to "tangibly" stem a massive refugee influx to quell a rebellion in her conservative ranks but firmly rebuffed calls to slam the door shut.

At a pivotal party congress of her Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Merkel said Germany would pursue a range of measures to stanch the flow of asylum seekers, slated to number around one million people this year.

More than 50 police officers and several demonstrators were injured in clashes in the eastern German city of Leipzig on Saturday as far-left protesters rallied against a neo-Nazi rally, police said.

In all, 56 police and several demonstrators were hurt, a police spokeswoman said, without giving details of the injuries. About 30 police vehicles were also damaged, she added.

Germany's Social Democrats are struggling at a party congress this week to emerge from Angela Merkel's shadow, where they've languished for a decade and been unable to exploit her current weakness in the polls.

Chancellor Merkel's junior partners in her left-right "grand coalition" government have long been stuck in the doldrums, currently tallying only about 25 percent support among the electorate.

The first batch of German troops and aircraft took off Thursday for Turkey as part of a deployment in the battle against the Islamic State group in Syria.

Forty soldiers and two Tornado reconnaissance jets left from the Jagel military airbase in northern Germany's Schleswig-Holstein state.

The head of Berlin's main asylum seeker registration center has been forced to resign over the chaos plaguing the office, which is struggling to process a record number of newcomers.

The resignation by Franz Allert late Wednesday came shortly after the German capital's mayor Michael Mueller made an open call on public broadcaster RBB for "new leadership for Lageso."

German Chancellor Angela Merkel will seek at a party congress Monday to stamp out dissent in her conservative Christian Democratic Union over a record refugee influx after months of corrosive infighting.

The expected arrival to Europe's top economic power this year of one million people fleeing war and poverty has scrambled the German political map, making the long-mighty Merkel look vulnerable and reviving a nearly defunct right-wing populist party.

Germany registered 964,574 new asylum seekers in the first 11 months of the year, putting Europe's top economy on track for a million arrivals in 2015, official figures showed Monday.

Some 206,101 migrants arrived in November alone, a new monthly record, up from a previous high of 181,166 in October, according to the interior ministry.

Arson attacks on refugee shelters, assaults, swastikas sprayed on walls -- as Germany has taken in record numbers of asylum seekers, it has been rocked by a xenophobic backlash which authorities have appeared unable to stop.

With one million arrivals expected in the EU's most populous nation this year, about half of them from Syria, Chancellor Angela Merkel has rallied Germans to welcome the newcomers and vowed to crack down on hate-mongers.

An Australian man who reportedly joined a group fighting Islamic State jihadists in Syria will be deported from Germany, the foreign ministry said Saturday.

Australian media had reported that Ashley Dyball was detained in Germany after traveling to Europe for a break from working with a Kurdish militia group known as YPG.