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Participants in a banned pro-Palestine demonstration in Sonnenallee
Photo: Paul Zinken / dpa
In Berlin's Neukölln district, pro-Palestinian protests have escalated again, leading to riots. Participants of the banned events threw stones and bottles at police officers and set off pyrotechnics, as the authority announced on platform X, formerly Twitter.
During operations, "colleagues" were injured, among other things, "by stones, burning liquids and acts of resistance". "Bystanders" and "persons who resisted" had also suffered injuries. The police did not provide further details, such as the severity of the injuries. In a housing estate, several cars and a truck burned and a tree caught fire. Pepper spray and "coercion" were used in the arrests of suspects.
Aggressive mood and numerous arrests
Previously, the police had reported that in the evening there were still "large gatherings of people" on Sonnenallee in Neukölln, where administrative offenses and crimes were committed. After objects were thrown indiscriminately on the street and set on fire, water cannons were deployed. This was also used to extinguish fires, police said.
"The situation in Nord-Neukölln is tense," Berlin's police chief Barbara Slowik had already said on RBB in the early evening. There are certainly several hundred people on the streets in Sonnenallee. "We have to expect smaller and larger groups on the streets tonight as well, chanting and perhaps even committing crimes," Slowik said. "We are clearly intervening," she announced.
A dpa reporter spoke in the evening of an aggressive mood and dozens of arrests. According to him, people mainly chanted "Free free palestine" and "Viva viva palestina". The police further said on X: "We see people randomly throwing objects into the street, setting them on fire, filming and celebrating themselves." Throwing pyrotechnics caused a fire on a balcony, which police officers extinguished.
Vigil against anti-Semitism
According to police, several hundred people also gathered at the Foreign Office. According to the police, however, the rally against violence in the Middle East was ended directly by the organizer because she had no influence on the participants and the course of the assembly. Accordingly, 50 participants were registered. Several hundred had come.
After the attempted arson attack on the synagogue in Berlin's Brunnenstrasse on Wednesday night, around 50 people gathered for a vigil against anti-Semitism organized by neighbors. "Since we ourselves live in this neighborhood, we feel urgently obliged to resolutely oppose this morning's anti-Semitic motivated failed arson attack as well as anti-Semitism in general," said Sonja Kloevekorn, the head of the assembly, to the dpa news agency.
A rocket hit at the Ahli Arab Hospital in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, possibly killing hundreds, has sparked great anger, especially in Arab and Islamic countries. There were anti-Israel demonstrations there and also in Germany. On Tuesday evening, the Hamas-controlled health authority immediately blamed Israel for the rocket strike, and neighboring Arab states joined in. Israel firmly rejected this, calling it the impact of a stray rocket belonging to the Palestinian militant organization Islamic Jihad.
bbr/dpa/AFP