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‘A miracle’: German girl found after two days missing in remote woods

In what has been described as “a miracle”, a young girl has been found after surviving two nights of near-freezing temperatures in a remote and mountainous Bavarian forest.

'A miracle': German girl found after two days missing in remote woods
Search teams at the scene in norther Bavaria. Photo: Armin Weigel/dpa

“She is alive, but she is suffering from hypothermia and has been taken to the hospital,” a spokesman for the Bavarian police headquarters said of the missing Julia, an eight-year-old girl from Berlin. 

A Czech forestry worker is reported to have found her after an extensive manhunt in which hundreds of emergency service workers on both sides of the German-Czech border were mobilised to hunt through dense trees and rocks.

Julia went missing in the forests on the border region to the Czech Republic while on a walk with her parents on Sunday in the vicinity of Cherchov mountain.

According to the police, Julia, her brother and a cousin disappeared into the woods and their parents were unable to find them. After they called the emergency services, the two boys were located but no one could find Julia.

Some 1,400 rescue workers from Bavaria and the Czech Republic took part in the search in the area between the towns of Waldmünchen, Furth im Wald and Domazlice. 

The Bavarian Red Cross described it as the largest cross-border search operation that had ever taken place in the region. “The fact that it was possible to find the child is tantamount to a miracle,” the rescue service stated on Facebook.

The helpers were in action for two days and two nights and were supported by 115 search dogs, police helicopters and drones with thermal imaging cameras.

With much of the area impassable due to rocks and crevices as well as dense tree cover, and with temperatures close to freezing at night, police feared a “life-threatening and serious danger.”

As recently as Tuesday morning, authorities worried that her chances of survival were diminishing by the hour.

“We mobilised everything, riot police, dog squads, helicopters with thermal imaging cameras, drones and search teams of the Alpine Task Force. In the end, it was a bit of luck that a Czech forester involved in the search operation found the girl,” said Bavaria’s Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann.

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PROTESTS

Clashes mar rally against far right in north-west France

Riot police clashed with demonstrators in the north-western French city of Rennes on Thursday in the latest rally against the rise of the far-right ahead of a national election this month.

Clashes mar rally against far right in north-west France

The rally ended after dozens of young demonstrators threw bottles and other projectiles at police, who responded with tear gas.

The regional prefecture said seven arrests were made among about 80 people who took positions in front of the march through the city centre.

The rally was called by unions opposed to Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National party (RN), which is tipped to make major gains in France’s looming legislative elections. The first round of voting is on June 30.

“We express our absolute opposition to reactionary, racist and anti-Semitic ideas and to those who carry them. There is historically a blood division between them and us,” Fabrice Le Restif, regional head of the FO union, one of the organisers of the rally, told AFP.

Political tensions have been heightened by the rape of a 12-year-old Jewish girl in a Paris suburb, for which two 13-year-old boys have been charged. The RN has been among political parties to condemn the assault.

Several hundred people protested against anti-Semitism and ‘rape culture’ in Paris in the latest reaction.

Dominique Sopo, president of anti-racist group SOS Racisme, said it was “an anti-Semitic crime that chills our blood”.

Hundreds had already protested on Wednesday in Paris and Lyon amid widespread outrage over the assault.

The girl told police three boys aged between 12 and 13 approached her in a park near her home in the Paris suburb of Courbevoie on Saturday, police sources said.

She was dragged into a shed where the suspects beat and raped her, “while uttering death threats and anti-Semitic remarks”, one police source told AFP.

France has the largest Jewish community of any country outside Israel and the United States.

At Thursday’s protest, Arie Alimi, a lawyer known for tackling police brutality and vice-president of the French Human Rights League, said voters had to prevent the far-right from seizing power and “installing a racist, anti-Semitic and sexist policy”.

But he also said he was sad to hear, “anti-Semitic remarks from a part of those who say they are on the left”.

President Emmanuel Macron called the elections after the far-right thrashed his centrist alliance in European Union polls. The far-right and left-wing groups have accused each other of being anti-Semitic.

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