German
officials call for clampdown on illegal ‘firework bombs’ after five deaths
Explosives
brought in from Poland and the Czech Republic are combined with household items
for a bigger bang
Deborah Cole
in Berlin and Jon Henley in Paris
Thu 2 Jan
2025 14.28 CET
German
officials have called for a clampdown on illegally imported and homemade
“firework bombs” after pyrotechnics for personal use killed at least five
people across the country on New Year’s Eve.
The use of
personal firecrackers is widespread and only lightly regulated in Germany,
leading to hundreds of injuries and massive deployments of police and first
responders in cities at the end of every year.
In Berlin
alone, police and hospital officials said 17 people had been hurt by
Kugelbomben, spherical explosives that are legally restricted to professional
firework displays. Five victims including small children suffered serious
injuries to their hands, faces and eyes while others sought help for burns and
hearing damage.
“The number
of patients treated compared to previous years was average or a little below
average,” a spokesperson for the UKB hospital in Berlin told local media. “But
the severity of the injuries is unusual.”
Most of the
fatalities were young men killed in separate accidents while trying to ignite
pyrotechnics, in some cases using illicit firework bombs that they had altered
for more spectacular effect. The Kugelbomben had been mainly brought in from
Poland or the Czech Republic and combined with components such as aerosol cans
and plastic pipes for a bigger bang and a higher trajectory, authorities said.
The
spherical or ball bombs come in various sizes and are reserved in Germany for
professional fireworks displays. Before New Year’s Eve, however, they could be
seen on offer illegally on social media channels.
Berlin’s
regional head of the GdP police union, Stephan Weh, demanded a crackdown on
outlawed pyrotechnic imports and a general ban on private fireworks.
“Rockets,
firecrackers and compound fireworks are used to attack people and the number of
Kugelbomben is growing,” he said in a statement. “Fireworks belong in the hands
of professionals.”
A spherical
explosive set off in Berlin’s central Schöneberg district, where young
revellers have frequently clashed with police in previous years, severely
damaged several buildings, leaving 36 residences uninhabitable and sending two
people to hospital. A fire brigade spokesperson compared the scene of
destruction to a “battlefield”.
Another of
the firework bombs went off in a crowd in the northern district of Tegel,
injuring eight people, two of them critically including a young boy.
The interior
affairs spokesperson of the centre-right Christian Democratic Union in Berlin,
Burkard Dregger, demanded tougher measures to prevent the spread of Kugelbomben
in German cities during the December holidays.
“The import
of banned fireworks – Kugelbomben – from eastern neighbouring countries has got
to be stopped with even stricter border checks,” he told the local public
broadcaster RBB, calling for talks with the governments of Poland and the Czech
Republic to reach a regional consensus.
The
opposition Greens called for a total ban on private firework sales. “The
question is why we as a society are prepared to have a night of setting off
firecrackers with immeasurable collateral damage for people, animals and the
environment,” the party’s interior affairs spokesperson, Vasili Franco, said.
In the
Netherlands, a 46-year-old man who was severely injured in a firework accident
in the town of Tiel died in hospital on Wednesday, authorities said, bringing
the number of New Year’s Eve fireworks-related fatalities across the country to
two.
A
14-year-old boy was killed in Rotterdam while trying to relight a “cobra”, a
particularly explosive – and illegal – firework on Tuesday evening.
Dozens more
people suffered serious eye and other injuries despite sales of consumer
fireworks being supposedly outlawed in 19 Dutch cities, including Rotterdam and
Amsterdam, whose mayors have demanded a national ban.
And in
France, 984 cars were set on fire and 420 people arrested in an annual ritual
described by the hardline interior minister, Bruno Retailleau, as “gratuitous
and endemic violence” by “thugs attacking the property of often modest,
ordinary people”.
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