(22 Jun 2020) German Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman has condemned weekend disturbances in the southwestern city of Stuttgart, where a check for drugs was followed by violence against police officers and vehicles, then widespread vandalism of storefronts.
Authorities say 24 people were arrested over Saturday night's unrest and 19 police officers were injured.
Police say several hundred people were involved.
The scenes "are abhorrent and must be strongly condemned," Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert said Monday. "Anyone who takes part in such outbreaks of violence, brutally attacks police officers and destroys and plunders shops cannot in any way justify it."
The disturbances started after officers stopped a 17-year-old on suspicion of drug possession as several hundred people partied outside around 11:30 p.m. Saturday, police said.
Bystanders started throwing stones and bottles, and smaller groups ran through surrounding streets breaking shop windows, according to police.
Police said 40 businesses were vandalized, nine of them were looted and 12 police vehicles were damaged before officers brought the situation under control.
Police have said the violence had no apparent political motivation.
They said the suspect initially stopped was a white German citizen.
Of the two dozen people arrested, half held German passports and half were citizens of other countries.
Seibert also commented on an outbreak of the new coronavirus at a slaughterhouse in Rheda-Wiedenbrueck saying "everything needs to be done” to contain it.
Over 1,300 people have tested positive for COVID-19 at the large slaughterhouse.
Seibert said 20 workers at the Toennies meat plant in the western Guetersloh region have been hospitalized and several are in intensive care.
“This is an outbreak that needs to be taken very seriously," Seibert told reporters in Berlin on Monday.
Authorities have scrambled to stop the outbreak from spreading, by ordering mass tests of all workers and putting thousands of people into quarantine.
The outbreak at Toennies, where many workers are migrants from Eastern Europe, has pushed up Germany’s daily infection rate.
Authorities have dispatched virologists, contact tracing teams and the German army to help contain the outbreak.
Germany’s disease control center says the country has seen 190,359 confirmed cases and 8,885 virus-related deaths - about five times fewer deaths than in Britain.
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