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Germany: Bomb threat at Cologne mosque found to be a hoax
7-10-2019
COLOGNE, Germany (AA) : The police have issued an “all clear” after investigating a bomb threat at Germany’s largest mosque in the western city of Cologne.
The bomb threat, apparently sent by a far-right group via e-mail on Tuesday, forced the evacuation of visitors and staff at Cologne Central Mosque, in the Ehrenfeld area of the city which is run by the Turkish-Muslim umbrella group DITIB.
The headquarters of the Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs (DITIB) was also evacuated.
After searching the complex with bomb-sniffing dogs, the police found no bomb and the area was deemed safe.
Another DITIB mosque was vandalised in the early hours of Tuesday in the German city of Karlsruhe, Russian state-funded outlet Sputnik Turkey reported. An attack on a mosque in Tilburg, Holland was also reported this week.
Germany has witnessed growing Islamophobia in recent years triggered by the propaganda of far-right parties, and more than 100 mosques and religious institutions were attacked by by far-right extremists in 2018.
Police recorded 813 hate crimes against Muslims last year, including insults, threatening letters and physical assaults. At least 54 Muslims were injured in the attacks.
Germany, a country of over 81 million people, has the second-largest Muslim population in Western Europe after France. Among the country’s nearly 4.7 million Muslims, 3 million are of Turkish origin.
Additional report by The Muslim News
[Photo: Police cordon off streets in the Ehrenfeld area of Cologne and evacuated the complex of Cologne Central Mosque following a bomb threat, sent via e-mail, in Cologne, Germany on July 09, 2019. Photographer: Mesut Zeyrek/AA]
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