Arson attacks hit Turkish community sites in Germany

German police arrests a protestor during clashes following a demonstration against Turkey's offensive against Kurds in Syria's Afrin region, in this March 11, 2018 photo, at the airport in Duesseldorf. (AFP)

BERLIN: Arsonists on Monday struck a Turkish community center in Germany, the latest in a string of attacks which Turkey has sometimes blamed on Kurdish militants amid its military offensive in northern Syria.
Unknown attackers hurled incendiary devices at the center in the town of Ahlen, police said, also telling national news agency DPA they were not ruling out a political motive.
At the weekend Molotov cocktails were thrown at Turkish community mosques in Berlin and the town of Lauffen, a cultural center in Meschede and a Turkish vegetable shop in Itzehoe, where the windows of a mosque were also smashed.
No one was wounded in the attacks.
Police arrested three Syrian men, who denied involvement, after the Meschede attack, DPA reported.
The attacks came on a weekend that saw several demonstrations against Turkey’s military operation to oust the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) from the Afrin region of northern Syria.
Pro-Kurdish demonstrators rallied in Hamburg Saturday, where rocks were thrown at the Turkish Consulate, and on Sunday at Duesseldorf airport some protesters scuffled with police who employed pepper spray.
Turkey’s Foreign Ministry voiced “deep concern” about the attacks and said on Sunday that the incident in Lauffen had been claimed by a group affiliated with the banned Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
It added that there had been “a considerable increase in the number of attacks against Turkish mosques in Germany recently by racist and Islamophobic groups as well as the PKK terrorist organization.”
“We expect the perpetrators of these attacks to be caught as soon as possible and brought to justice and necessary measures to be taken by the German authorities to prevent the recurrence of such attacks.”