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CRIME

Tire factory gets bomb threats for two days in a row

For the second time in two days, the Goodyear Dunlop tire factory in Fulda received bomb threats from an unknown man, police reported Tuesday.

Tire factory gets bomb threats for two days in a row
Photo: DPA

The man called the police emergency hotline at 10 AM Tuesday morning and said the plant would be attacked later Tuesday afternoon, the daily Fuldaer Zeitung reported. On Monday, a man had also called in an anonymous threat against the factory.

Police could not definitively say whether Tuesday’s caller was the same as Monday’s.

The plant’s grounds were closed though it was uncertain whether the buildings had been evacuated. About 500 employees were forced to leave the facility Monday while police used trained dogs and a helicopter to search the facility for explosives. No sign of a bomb was discovered.

The factory’s late shift couldn’t come into work Monday afternoon as the searches were still ongoing and production only resumed with the night shift. The Fuldaer Zeitung reported that the factory remained open Tuesday, despite the renewed bomb threats.

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CRIME

Teenager turns self in after attack on German politician

A 17-year-old has turned himself in to police in Germany after an attack on a lawmaker that the country's leaders decried as a threat to democracy.

Teenager turns self in after attack on German politician

The teenager reported to police in the eastern city of Dresden early Sunday morning and said he was “the perpetrator who had knocked down the SPD politician”, police said in a statement.

Matthias Ecke, 41, European parliament lawmaker for Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD), was set upon by four attackers as he put up EU election posters in Dresden on Friday night, according to police.

Ecke was “seriously injured” and required an operation after the attack, his party said.

Scholz on Saturday condemned the attack as a threat to democracy.

“We must never accept such acts of violence,” he said.

Ecke, who is head of the SPD’s European election list in the Saxony region, was just the latest political target to be attacked in Germany.

Police said a 28-year-old man putting up posters for the Greens had been “punched” and “kicked” earlier in the evening on the same Dresden street.

Last week two Greens deputies were abused while campaigning in Essen in western Germany and another was surrounded by dozens of demonstrators in her car in the east of the country.

According to provisional police figures, 2,790 crimes were committed against politicians in Germany in 2023, up from 1,806 the previous year, but less than the 2,840 recorded in 2021, when legislative elections took place.

A group of activists against the far right has called for demonstrations against the attack on Ecke in Dresden and Berlin on Sunday, Der Spiegel magazine said.

According to the Tagesspiegel newspaper, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser is planning to call a special conference with Germany’s regional interior ministers next week to address violence against politicians.

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