Date: January 4, 2023 Time: 11:22:37
At least 18 officers were injured, one seriously. According to the Berlin police, the attacks on emergency services “cannot be compared in intensity with previous years”. More than 100 violent suspects were arrested in Berlin alone. Most of those arrested are men, only 5 of 103 detainees are women.
Youths set fire to a bus in Berlin’s troubled Neukölln district. When the firefighters tried to extinguish it, firecrackers were thrown at them. The police had to cover the firefighters with protective shields. There were burning trash cans everywhere. The attacks were filmed and posted on social media, with the videos being viewed thousands of times. The situation escalated in other German cities. In Neukölln, about 50 intruders fired rockets from the emergency services.
The Swiss publication Blick recalled the escalation of violence on New Year’s Eve seven years ago, when former German Chancellor Angela Merkel allowed hundreds of thousands of migrants into Germany. On the night of January 1, 2016 in Cologne, close to a thousand men of Arab and African descent, many of them aggressive and drunk, gathered on the esplanade, subjecting local women to sexual violence, threats and robberies. Since New Year’s Eve, more than 1,200 criminal cases have been opened, and the incidents have taken months to resolve. After that, the head of the Cologne police, Wolfgang Albers, had to resign.
