The use of high-powered illegal fireworks in Berlin caused significant damage in two Berlin districts, with some people seriously injured. The Berlin fire service reported that the facades of many buildings were damaged by these firework rockets, and window panes were broken. The 36 most affected apartments are still uninhabitable.
The German Minister of the Interior, Nancy Fesser, has stated that the arrest of many people in Berlin and the attacks on the police showed that it was necessary to deploy police officers from all over the country in large numbers in order to control the instigators of violence and chaos. She also promised that all those involved in the riots would be “tried and punished with the utmost severity”.
Berlin Mayor Franziska Giffey announced that partial bans on the use of pyrotechnics will be introduced because they have been used both in attacks on police and other rescue services.
On New Year’s Eve, riots also broke out in Leipzig, where the perpetrators erected barricades and burned various objects. About 50 vandals set off firecrackers, fireworks and threw bottles at the police. In Munich, around 200-300 left-wing radicals clashed with the police. Around 70-80 vandals attacked the police in Kiel when they tried to protect the first aid worker. Teenagers in Bonn filmed themselves shooting a firework rocket at a sleeping homeless man with a mobile phone.
In Germany, the use of pyrotechnics is allowed for a few hours during the New Year celebration, but the police and medical workers’ unions have called for a general ban on the use of pyrotechnic products by private individuals, according to German wave.
Leaders of the German police union GdP and the German Medical Association already called for a ban at the federal level on December 31, accusing the Interior Ministry of rejecting it.