Videos were posted online showing people breaking windows
Berlin:
Hundreds of people started a riot on Sunday morning in Stuttgart city center, throwing stones and bottles at police and looting shops after breaking shop windows.
“The police are currently looking for contacts and are questioning more than 20 people who have been provisionally arrested,” the southwest city authorities said in a statement.
More than a dozen police officers were also injured in the clashes, he added.
“I strongly condemn this brutal outbreak of violence, these acts against people and things are criminal actions which must be prosecuted and condemned with force,” said the Prime Minister of Baden-Württemberg, Winfried Kretschmann.
The region’s interior minister, Thomas Strobl, said the riots were “of an unprecedented nature.”
Sascha Binder, one of the main local deputies of the Social Democratic Party, had previously described the violence as “scenes of civil war”.
Tensions built up soon after midnight over police checks on drug use by people who had gathered near the city’s largest square, Schlossplatz.
Clashes then broke out as the groups went wild, using sticks or sticks to smash the windows of police vehicles parked in the neighborhood.
Police estimated that around 500 people were involved in the riot, which also looted stores along Koenigstrasse, a key shopping artery.
The police called in reinforcements and could not quell the violence until a few hours later.
Videos posted on Twitter showed people breaking windows, leaving goods scattered on the streets.
According to a regional broadcaster SWR, a jewelry store was completely emptied and a mobile phone shop was wrecked.
Smaller clashes erupted in the city center last week between police and youth groups.
(With the exception of the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
