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HOSTAGE

Police not ruling out ‘terror’ motive in Cologne hostage taking

A man who hurled a burning molotov cocktail then took a woman hostage at a major German railway station Monday may have acted with a "terrorist" motive, police said

Police not ruling out 'terror' motive in Cologne hostage taking
The police work to secure evidence in the pharmacy where the hostage taking occurred. Photo: DPA

Police said they found a passport issued to a 55-year-old Syrian man at the scene, and that the suspect had claimed to be a member of the Islamic State militant group.

“The investigation is considering all possibilities and we are not ruling out terrorism,” Cologne deputy police chief Miriam Brauns told a news conference.

Heavily armed police commandos using stun grenades had shot the man when 
they stormed the scene, freeing the female hostage who suffered minor injuries. Two other people were injured and the attacker was badly wounded with multiple shots.

Authorities had received an alert at 12:42 local time at Cologne railway station, one of the busiest in Europe. They evacuated the scene and halted all trains at the station next to Cologne's iconic twin-spired cathedral.

The man sparked panic when he entered a McDonald's restaurant inside the station and hurled a molotov cocktail, leaving a 14-year-old girl with burns.

An eyewitness told journalists how she heard screams and saw “a girl running for her life” with flames spreading up her leg, before she was helped by bystanders.

SEE ALSO: Police report end to hostage situation at Cologne's Hauptbahnhof

Syrian passport found

As the sprinkler system activated and water rained down in the fast-food restaurant, the man entered an adjacent pharmacy and took another woman hostage, whom he also threatened to burn in the ensuing drama, said police.

Police negotiated with him in a bid to defuse the tense situation and ascertain his motive, then stormed the pharmacy around 3:00 pm.

The man was holding a pistol — said to be either a replica or real, when commandos stormed the site, and he was also in possession of a flammable liquid and camping gas containers, two of them taped together. 

“Special response units overpowered the man. During the police action he hurt two bystanders, one of them seriously,” police said in a statement.

Police said they could not yet positively identify the hostage taker, who was undergoing surgery, but believed he was a 55-year-old Syrian migrant.

Syrian identity documents had been found in the pharmacy for a man who had  been issued a residency permit in Germany valid until 2021.

The man identified in the document was known to police for previous offences including theft and illegal drugs possession.

Klaus-Stephan Becker, head of Cologne criminal police, also told news channel NTV that “it could be a foiled terrorist attack”.

The man had carried a suitcase and bag, which he left in the restaurant, and had also demanded “the release of a Tunisian woman”, said police commander Klaus Rueschenschmidt, without giving further details.

Police set up a webpage where members of the public could upload pictures and video related to the incident, while their own investigations were “at full pitch”.

Germany remains on high alert over the risk of a jihadist attack, having suffered several in recent years.

The bloodiest claimed by the Islamic State jihadist group was a truck rampage through a Berlin Christmas market in December 2016 that left 12 people dead.

In June 2018, German police said they foiled what would have been the first biological attack with the arrest of a Tunisian suspected jihadist in possession of the deadly poison ricin and bomb-making material.

Germany remains a target for jihadist groups, in particular because of its involvement in the coalition fighting IS in Iraq and Syria, and its deployment in Afghanistan since 2001.

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JUDAISM

Ancient Jewish settlement to be brought back to life in Cologne

No city north of the Alps has been home to Jews for as long as the Roman settlement of Cologne. A recently discovered Jewish quarter is now being brought back to life.

Ancient Jewish settlement to be brought back to life in Cologne
The site of the construction in Cologne. Photo: DPA

If you are a tourist walking through the centre of Cologne, sooner rather than later, you'll come across a construction site located in the very best position, in the middle of the town hall square.

At the beginning of this millennium, the people of Cologne dug into the earth directly in front of their historic city hall and found a treasure from another millennium: the Jewish quarter.

Complete with a dance hall, a hospital, a bakery and a synagogue, the quarter contains the ruins of a settlement from the Middle Ages. It is a city within a city, a miniature world of houses huddled together. 

Of course, all that is left is ruins – one needs a bit of imagination to picture how the whole thing once looked. But experts from Germany and abroad agree: there's nothing like it anywhere else in the world.

Ancient tradition

No other German city has been associated with Jewish history for so long as Cologne. 

The first documented Jewish community dates back to the year 321, making it the oldest north of the Alps. 

But in 1349, the neighbourhood was destroyed and its inhabitants were murdered or expelled. Local Christians blamed Jews for the outbreak of the plague.

Currently, a museum is being built over the site on the town hall square. It will be a parallel world underground: visitors will be able to relive life in the Jewish quarter in the era of knights and minstrels on a 600-meter-long trail. The trail also visits the governor's palace from Roman times, which was rediscovered in the 1950s. 

The museum is called MiQua after the name for the Jewish ritual bath, Mikveh.

Exhibits will include artifacts found during the excavations; among them is a crescent-shaped, gem-set gold earring from the 11th century. 

The researchers also discovered a tablet dating back to the Middle Ages with the inscription “yt in ys neyt anders.” This could be translated as “Et is wie et is” (It is as it is) – a classic Cologne saying. 

The museum is scheduled to open in 2024, but through the panorama windows on the third floor of the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, also located on Rathausplatz, one can already follow the progress of construction work.

This year Jewish life will be celebrated across the country – the anniversary year '1,700 years of Jewish life in Germany' will be celebrated nationwide. 

Hamburg is organising a themed week entitled 'More than Little Jerusalem'; in Nuremberg the photo exhibition 'Germany's Emigrants' will be opened; and in Herxheim in Rhineland-Palatinate the play Judas by Lot Vekemans will be staged.

READ MORE: 9 hilarious gifts Judaism gave the German language

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