SHARE
COPY LINK

POLICE

Dozens saved as huge refugee home burns to ground

A large temporary refugee home in western Germany was completely burned down on Monday night, but a prompt evacuation allowed all the inhabitants to escape unharmed.

Dozens saved as huge refugee home burns to ground
Firefighters stand in the burned-out shell of the inflatable tent. Photo: DPA

“We can be thankful that despite the large fire no-one was hurt,” said Karin Welge, a city official responsible for social affairs and the fire service in Gelsenkirchen, North Rhine-Westphalia.

Police reported that they were alerted to the fire in the large inflatable tent, designed to house 90 people, at around 9:40 pm.

Security guards at the accommodation centre spotted the fire quickly and were able to evacuate the 41 people inside at the time.

Witnesses said that the fire started inside the tent and spread quickly.

Around 50 firefighters rushed to the scene to fight the blaze, but although they quickly brought it under control there was no way to stop the tent being completely burned down.

The inhabitants were later brought to another refugee centre in Gelsenkirchen by bus.

Police have now begun investigating the cause of the fire, but there were no immediate leads on Tuesday morning.

Federal investigators recorded more than 1,000 attacks on refugee homes in 2015.

Due to the nature of the crimes, the people behind such attacks are often difficult to track down and few perpetrators have been brought to justice.

Other refugee homes have seen fires break out by accident, while there was even one case of a refugee starting a fire in a hotel and leaving false clues pointing to far-right attackers in what he called a protest at his living conditions.

POLICE

Denmark convicts man over bomb joke at airport

A Danish court on Thursday gave a two-month suspended prison sentence to a 31-year-old Swede for making a joke about a bomb at Copenhagen's airport this summer.

Denmark convicts man over bomb joke at airport

In late July, Pontus Wiklund, a handball coach who was accompanying his team to an international competition, said when asked by an airport agent that
a bag of balls he was checking in contained a bomb.

“We think you must have realised that it is more than likely that if you say the word ‘bomb’ in response to what you have in your bag, it will be perceived as a threat,” the judge told Wiklund, according to broadcaster TV2, which was present at the hearing.

The airport terminal was temporarily evacuated, and the coach arrested. He later apologised on his club’s website.

“I completely lost my judgement for a short time and made a joke about something you really shouldn’t joke about, especially in that place,” he said in a statement.

According to the public prosecutor, the fact that Wiklund was joking, as his lawyer noted, did not constitute a mitigating circumstance.

“This is not something we regard with humour in the Danish legal system,” prosecutor Christian Brynning Petersen told the court.

SHOW COMMENTS