Shock in Germany as hundreds run riot in Stuttgart
AFP
news@thelocal.de
@thelocalgermany
Updated
21 June
2020
17:47
CEST+02:00
German
authorities expressed shock Sunday over a rampage of an "unprecedented
scale" overnight in the city centre of Stuttgart, where hundreds of
party-goers ran riot, attacking police and plundering stores after smashing
shop windows.
Two dozen
people, half of them German nationals, were arrested provisionally, as police
reported 19 colleagues hurt.
"They
were unbelievable scenes that have left me speechless. In my 46 years of police
service, I have never experienced this," said Stuttgart police chief Frank
Lutz.
Tensions
built up shortly after midnight when officers carried out checks on a
17-year-old German man suspected of using drugs, said Stuttgart deputy police
chief Thomas Berger.
Crowds who
were milling around at the city's biggest square, the Schlossplatz, immediately
rallied around the young man and began flinging stones and bottles at police.
The groups
of mostly men also used sticks or poles to smash windows of police vehicles
parked in the area.
"I
sharply condemn this brutal outbreak of violence, these acts against people and
things are criminal action that must be forcefully prosecuted and
condemned," Baden-Wuerttemberg state premier Winfried Kretschmann said in
a statement.
At the
height of the clashes, some 400 to 500 people joined in the battle against
police officers and rescue workers.
As officers
pushed back against the crowd, they broke up into small groups, carrying on
their rampage around the city centre, smashing shop windows and looting stores
along nearby Koenigstrasse, a major shopping street.
'Party
scene'
Videos
posted on Twitter showed people breaking shop windows, leaving goods strewn on
the streets.
A jewellery
store was completely emptied and a mobile phone shop wrecked, according to
regional broadcaster SWR.
In all,
nine shops were looted while 14 others suffered damage such as broken windows.
As smaller
scale clashes had already broken out downtown last week between police and
groups of young people, officers had already bulked up their deployment
overnight with an extra 100-strong team.
But the
scale of the violence overwhelmed the officers, forcing them to call in
reinforcements from other parts of the state.
Only four
and a half hours later were they able to quell the violence that has been
described as "civil war-like scenes" by Social Democrat regional MP
Sascha Binder.
An
unusually large number of people were in the city centre to enjoy the summer's
night because discos and clubs are still shut over he coronavirus pandemic,
said Stuttgart mayor Fritz Kuhn.
Some of the
rioters were charged up by alcohol, he said, adding that others may have been
driven by "the addiction of putting a little film on social media."
Asked about
the nationalities of the 12 non-Germans who were detailed, Berger said they
stemmed from a range of countries from Croatia and Portugal to Afghanistan and
Somalia.
Calling the
riots of "an unprecedented nature," interior minister for the region
Thomas Strobl vowed to "use all available means available under the rule
of law to go after the rioters."
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