BERLIN (AA) – A Turkish mosque in Berlin was set alight on Sunday morning. It is the 24th time in two months that a mosque in Germany had been deliberately targeted, the Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affair, DITIB, said in a press statement.
The Koca Sinan Mosque, belonging to the DITIB, was badly damaged in the arson attack.
“Witnesses told us that three assailants with covered faces threw burning material and immediately ran away,” said Bayram Turk, the head of the mosque association.
In its statement, DITIB called on German authorities to ensure that Muslim places of worship were protected, to find out who was behind attacks as quickly as possible and to bring those responsible to justice.
It warned that it was “a question of time” before someone was injured and accused German politicians and society of remaining silent about the everyday discrimination and attacks directed against Muslims.
Firebombs were thrown at a Turkish immigrants’ association in the western town of Meschede, also on Sunday, and at a mosque in Lauffen, in southern Germany, on Friday. No one was injured in those attacks.
Germany’s Interior Ministry recently released figures showing that some 950 anti-Muslim offenses had been carried out in Germany in 2017. Many of those crimes were committed by far-right elements
Germany has a 3 million-strong Turkish community, many of whom are second- and third-generation German-born citizens of Turkish descent whose grandparents moved to the country during the 1960s.
Additional report by The Muslim News
[Archive Photo: A mosque in Frieberg, Germany vandalised with Nazi symbols. Photographer: AA]