Hundreds of people were temporarily detained in Berlin during New Year’s Eve celebrations, according to police. By early Thursday morning, around 400 individuals had been taken into short-term custody, Berlin police said. At least 24 officers were injured during the operations.
Following violent incidents during previous New Year’s Eve celebrations, Berlin police deployed a large force this year, with 4,300 officers on duty across the city. “To prevent reckless fireworks excesses, we carried out numerous checks up until this evening and seized large quantities of illegal pyrotechnics,” police said earlier in online statements. During searches of vehicles and a residential apartment, officers confiscated so-called “Kugelbomben,” a particularly dangerous type of firework.
Several incidents were reported by police earlier in the evening. In the Mitte district, a person allegedly fired a blank-firing gun from a balcony. An emergency response team later seized a PTB-certified weapon from the apartment. PTB weapons include blank-firing, signal, and gas weapons.
A day earlier, police said that searches of apartments in the Neukölln district led to the seizure of pyrotechnics with a “net explosive mass of nearly 14 kilograms.” Officers also discovered a five-figure sum of cash, believed to be proceeds from illegal sales. Last year, the use of Kugelbomben during New Year’s Eve celebrations in Berlin caused significant damage and resulted in several injuries.
Berlin’s fire department reported that a bus was partially destroyed by fire in the Wilmersdorf district. It was initially unclear whether the fire was caused by fireworks. In Hamburg, emergency services were also deployed in large numbers. According to Hamburg police, ten officers were injured during New Year’s Eve operations.
Amputations and burnsSeveral people suffered severe injuries while handling fireworks during New Year’s Eve celebrations in Berlin. By Thursday morning, more than 30 injured individuals were being treated at the Unfallkrankenhaus Berlin (UKB), with some requiring amputations of fingers or parts of their hands, hospital spokesperson Angela Kijewski told AFP. Burn injuries, as well as facial and eye injuries, were also reported.
“It is particularly horrific,” Kijewski said, referring to the fact that eight of the injured were minors between the ages of 14 and 17. “Their lives will be permanently changed by these injuries,” she said. The minors had lost fingers or parts of their hands. In addition, several young men suffered serious facial injuries, including eye damage, after fireworks detonated in their faces while they were leaning over firework batteries.
According to the spokesperson, injuries caused by illegal “Kugelbomben” fireworks were not observed this year, unlike in the previous year. “That is positive,” she said. However, the severity of some of the injuries suggested the use of other types of illegal fireworks. “We do assume that this was not a normal firecracker,” Kijewski said.
The number of patients treated was in line with the average seen during previous New Year’s Eve celebrations, the spokesperson added. The hospital expects that more people with injured limbs will seek treatment later in the day. “When they have slept off their alcohol or drug intoxication and realize, ‘Oh, something is missing,’ then they come to us,” Kijewski said.
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