That has been seized on by some opponents of Germany’s welcoming stance toward those fleeing conflict after the country registered almost 1.1 million asylum-seekers past year.
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Federal police have identified 18 asylum seekers in the Cologne crowd, German Interior Ministry spokesman Tobias Plate said in Berlin on Friday.
Plate also said the vast majority of the 32 criminal acts documented by police were tied to theft and bodily injury.
The total number of police complaints in Cologne has risen to 170, with 113 of those alleging sexual assault.
However, an internal police report widely published in German media indicated strongly that police were overwhelmed and described how women had to run through mobs of drunken men outside Cologne’s main train station.
Three men have been arrested in southern Germany for the alleged gang rape of two teenage girls on New Year’s Eve. Eighteen had earlier requested asylum in Germany.
“People want to know, and rightly so, what happened on New Year’s Eve, who the offenders were and how these incidents can be prevented”, Jäger, the regional interior minister, said Friday. “They couldn’t take care of us and we as women suffered the price”.
The interior minister of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Ralf Jaeger, said his decision to remove Mr Albers would not affect the continuing investigation into the events of 31 December.
Merkel and her party members are considering a new policy that would allow deportation for immigrants jailed for any amount of time in Germany.
German authorities say they have identified 18 asylum seekers among 31 suspects linked to crimes committed in Cologne at New Year.
The attackers were described as North African and Middle Eastern in appearance.
Other cities that reported such cases include Zurich, Switzerland, where six women reported being “robbed from one side, [while] being groped… on the other side” by groups of men with “dark skin”, as well as Helsinki, Finland, where police reported receiving reports of “widespread sexual harassment”.
Among those identified were nine Algerians, eight Moroccans, five Iranians, four Syrians, one Iraqi, one Serb, one American as well as two German citizens.
Yesterday it emerged that the police in Cologne simply could not cope with the outbreak of violence and sexual assaults that occurred in the city on New Year’s Eve.
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In Cologne, the paper reported, the police initially said that there was no evidence that refugees were involved in the crime.
