11 January 2016•Update: 11 January 2016
BERLIN
Pakistanis and Syrians were attacked in Cologne, police said on Monday, in the wake of mass New Year’s Eve robberies and sex attacks on women in the northwestern German city.
Police said far-right extremists had formed gangs and communicated through social media to carry out assaults on Sunday evening in Cologne following hundreds of Dec. 31 attacks carried out by suspects described as Arabic or North African migrants.
Officers have opened an investigation into the attack on six Pakistani nationals near Cologne’s central train station by around 20 assailants, police chief Norbert Wagner said. Two injured victims were treated in hospital. A Syrian was also attacked on Sunday evening.
“This is an alarming signal, we are taking this very serious,” Wagner told a news conference in Cologne.
Presenting a report to North Rhine-Westphalia’s state parliament on Monday, the state’s Interior Minister Ralf Jager confirmed the majority of the New Year’s Eve suspects were migrants, the Deutsche Welle newspaper reported.
Federal police had identified 31 suspects so far, including 18 asylum seekers.#
There have been 516 reports of sexual assaults and thefts at Cologne’s New Year celebrations, including one rape.
Jager said it was “wrong and dangerous” to stigmatize foreign groups as sexual predators.
Far-right groups have tried to exploit the attacks to condemn the government’s open door policy for asylum seekers.
Federal Justice Minister Heiko Maas said Monday the government was examining possible legislative changes to more effectively tackle serious crime and sexual assaults.
However, he added: “There can be no justification for the generalizations, smear campaigns against foreigners.”
Germany is shouldering the largest share of refugees - 1.1 million - who have flooded into Europe over the past year and Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition government is facing growing public criticism.
