In Berlin there were several incidents with New Year’s Eve fireworks around the turn of the year. As the police in the capital wrote on Twitter on Sunday night, police officers and firefighters were “massively attacked with firecrackers” when extinguishing a burning car.
“We are now securing the firefighting with additional forces,” it said. In the Tempelhof district, pyrotechnics and a fire extinguisher were thrown at a bus. The front windshield was destroyed. According to the police, 60 to 80 people tried to light a vehicle with fireworks in the Lichtenrade district.
Also in the capital, the windows of a shop were “blown away”. “Our colleague. came quickly and then literally came under fire,” the police tweeted. An officer suffered injuries. In Mitte, a woman was injured in the neck by a firecracker. The police also reported operations in connection with fireworks from other parts of the city: “Idiots shoot pyro at passers-by in a targeted manner
Since 7 p.m., the Berlin fire brigade has been in a state of emergency on New Year’s Eve. This means that about three times as many emergency services are on the road as usual. According to the fire brigade, more than 1200 forces are deployed. Within the first hour, the fire brigade responded to more than 40 firefighting operations. A large-scale operation took place on Urbanstraße in Kreuzberg, where around 70 forces were fighting a basement fire in a seven-storey residential building.
The Berlin police have been tweeting about their operations since the afternoon. Accordingly, the officials moved out in several cases because people shot around with blank pistols. “In
Every minute, the police reported operations due to fights, shots from alarm pistols, firecrackers and rockets thrown at passers-by, buildings and officials. Three no-gun zones had been set up across the city. Everywhere in the capital there were gunfire during the day – even if this was officially only allowed from 6 p.m. on New Year’s Eve.
In the evening, Berlin’s governing mayor Franziska Giffey and interior senator Iris Spranger (both SPD) visited several fire and police stations as well as operational groups and thanked them for their work on New Year’s Eve and at night. “I wish my colleagues, I wish everyone a peaceful turn of the year, hopefully also as a harbinger of a peaceful year 2023,” said Spranger.