Kurds Attack German Police

[DEBRA at OLN.comlink.apc.org]

## Original in: /HRNET/EUROPE&MIDEAST
## author     : trh at NETCOM.COM
## date       : 05.07.94

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[This article has been excerpted.]

KURDS ATTACK GERMAN POLICE AFTER KILLING

HAMBURG, Germany, July 3 (Reuter) - Militant Kurds attacked
police stations across Germany in apparent retaliation for
the killing of a 16-year-old Turkish Kurd by a policeman
last week, German authorities said...Sunday.

Separately, unknown attackers threw firebombs at a Turkish
cultural centre in the northern German city of Hamburg early
...Sunday morning, injuring four people of whom one had to
be kept in hospital, police said.

They said that incident, together with the smashing of a
Turkish mosque's windows in Hanover...Sunday, appeared to
be connected to feuding between Turks and ethnic Kurds.

At least seven Turkish citizens, many of them ethnic Kurds,
were arrested on Saturday after attacks with firebombs and
stones on police stations in at least seven towns including
Hamburg, Hanover, Saarbruecken and Mainz. Around a dozen
police cars were...damaged or gutted.

Police in Hamburg said they believed the attacks were in
retaliation for the death last week of Ayhan Eser, shot by a
policeman as he struggled to resist being questioned. Most
attacks took place at roughly the same time...Saturday
afternoon.

Eser had been detained as he put up posters for banned
Kurdish separatists. Police say initial findings indicate
the shot went off accidentally in the struggle.

Militant Kurds in Germany have several times launched
attacks against Turkish property to press their claim for an
end to human rights abuses and independence for their
homeland in southeast Turkey. They have...protested against
what they see as Germany's support for Turkish repression.

On Saturday some 500 Kurds in Hanover and 200 in Hamburg
held largely peaceful marches against Eser's killing.