Thirty-nine people were arrested in central Frankfurt (Germany) for attacking police officers who intervened during an open-air party gathering thousands of young people on the night of Saturday to Sunday, said German police.
Five police officers were injured in the violence, which broke out around 3 a.m. A "rain of bottles" fell on the police who were trying to intervene in a fight involving around thirty people gathered on the Place de l'Opéra. It has become a popular gathering place for what the media call “corona parties,” bars and nightclubs still being closed to contain the spread of the coronavirus.
Young people from 17 to 21 years old
Some 3,000 people, mainly young people, gathered in the square on Saturday evening, but only 500 to 800 of them were still present when the brawl broke out, said the police chief of Frankfurt, Gerhard Bereswill, during a press conference. A small group of police officers approached to help a bleeding man and calm the fight, but the crowd attacked the police.
"What I find particularly abominable is that onlookers cheered when my colleagues were hit by bottles," he added. Police reinforcements then arrived and cleared the place. A total of 38 men and a woman were arrested. They are between the ages of 17 and 21, "mostly from an immigrant background," according to the police chief. Eight of them were still under arrest on Sunday. They could be prosecuted for disturbing public order.
The Stuttgart precedent
The city's mayor, Peter Feldmann, condemned on Twitter the "unacceptable" behavior of the participants in the violence and called for a stronger police presence in this type of rally. City officials are scheduled to meet on Monday to discuss possible responses to the unrest.
These incidents are reminiscent of those that occurred in Stuttgart last month, where nightly violence had erupted following a police check for a drug case, which had escalated. Several hundred young people, some highly alcoholic, had sown chaos for several hours in the city center.
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