Nadine Osman

Bomb attacks hit a mosque and a convention centre in the eastern German city of Dresden on September 26.

No one was injured in the explosions in a city that has become a hotspot for far-right protests and hate crimes following a major influx of migrants and refugees into Germany.

The imam, his wife and two sons were in the Fatih Camii mosque at the time of the blast. Police said they found the remains of homemade explosives at both crime scenes.

“Although no one has so far claimed responsibility, we must assume that there was a xenophobic motive,” Horst Kretschmar, the Dresden police chief, said.

German Interior Minister, Thomas de Maiziere said the attack was “all the more scandalous” because it happened on the eve of the 10th annual meeting of the German Islam Conference.

Police linked the explosion at the congress centre to celebrations in Dresden marking the 26th anniversary of German unification.

About 300 worshippers regularly attend prayers at the Fatih Camii mosque, which lies a short distance from Dresden’s historic centre.

The explosion at the mosque was detonated at 7:53pm. The force of the blast pushed the front door of the building inwards and left the building covered with soot, police said.

The explosion at the convention centre, about 2km from the Fatih Camii mosque on the River Elbe, which runs through Dresden, occurred about half an hour later.

The heat caused by the explosion at the centre destroyed the side of a decorative glass cube in an open area in the congress building and resulted in parts of the building being evacuated.

Ferhat Aytaç , an engineer from Riesa who regularly attends prayers at the mosque, told The Muslim News the double bombings comes as no surprise.

“It was only a matter of time before something like this happened. For the last few years politicians and far-right groups have been whipping up anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant sentiment in Dresden.”

Dresden is the birthplace of the anti-Muslim anti-immigration Pegida street movement, short for Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the Occident.

Saxony state premier Stanislaw Tillich called the “cowardly” bombings an “attack on freedom of religion and on the values of an enlightened society” that could easily have claimed lives.