Five people have been killed and dozens of emergency workers were injured as a spate of incidents involving fireworks marred New Year’s Eve celebrations in Germany.
Despite calls for a nationwide ban on the private use of fireworks, they continue to be a significant part of New Year’s celebrations in the country, with thousands of the pyrotechnics set off on city streets each year.
Among those killed were two people in the eastern state of Saxony, according to local public broadcaster MDR, including a 45-year-old man who was killed after handling what was described as a “firework bomb.”
Firefighters and other emergency services personnel were targeted by the fireworks during festivities overnight on Tuesday into Wednesday, authorities said.
In the capital Berlin, firefighters responded to 1,892 incidents on New Year’s Eve – 294 more than the previous year, according to a statement from the city’s fire department. Over 1,500 emergency services personnel were on duty.
At least 13 attacks on emergency workers were reported, the statement said.
According to Berlin police spokesperson Florian Nath, 330 people were detained in the capital on New Year’s Eve. One police officer was severly injured due after being “presumably hit by an illegal firework,” and is undergoing surgery in hospital, Nath said.
“Several people standing around the scene attacked the police officers and it is one of the low points of tonight,” he added.
Meanwhile, Munich’s fire department said that a wayward firework ignited a huge balcony fire on the first floor of an apartment building. The fire then spread to an apartment on the second floor, a statement from the department said.
The statement continued that this year saw “particularly serious” injuries caused by pyrotechnics on Munich. Three children, aged two, eleven and fourteen, were seriously injured during incidents in the city.
While the two-year-old boy and the eleven-year-old boy suffered burns to their hands, neck and face, the 14-year-old boy blew off parts of his hand with a New Year’s Eve firecracker. All of them had to be transported to hospitals for further medical treatment, the department said.
In a statement on X, German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser praised the work of the emergency services, adding that the “deployment of strong police forces from the federal states and the federal police and an early and consistent crackdown are the right means against perpetrators of violence and chaos.”
She continued, “However, the many arrests in Berlin alone and the renewed attacks on police officers also show that this crackdown was absolutely necessary.”
The first responders’ union issued a statement Wednesday condemning violence against the emergency services.
tomo‘It is unacceptable that people who work for the common good are repeatedly the target of attacks. Under no circumstances should violence against public service employees be accepted as an occupational hazard,’ said ver.di deputy chairwoman Christine Behle.
The concern lies particularly with illegal and homemade fireworks, according to BVPK, a German pyrotechnics association. “These extremely dangerous crafts have nothing to do with legal and tested New Year’s Eve fireworks from specialist retailers or discounters,” board member Ingo Schubert said.
“Anyone who associates the dangerous tinkering and the illegal handling of dangerous explosives with safe, small fireworks is confusing apples with oranges.”
German environmental organization Deutsche Umwelthilfe renewed its calls for a nationwide ban on the private sale of pyrotechnics on New Year’s Eve in a statement on Wednesday, warning that the turn of the year once again became “a night of horror for countless people.”