For the second time in a week, a mysterious explosion occurred in the German city of Cologne. The blast happened on Wednesday, September 18th, in the early morning in the city centre, on Ehrenstrasse, a street filled with shops and apartments, police said.
The explosion caused a fire but it was quickly extinguished, and no one was injured. The windows of a clothing store were shattered, and some of the store’s furniture was destroyed. Residents of apartments within the building woke to the sound of the explosion at 5 a.m.
Police said they were “on the scene with a large contingent of officers” and that “we are closing down the area.” They called on the public to avoid the area near the scene of the explosion.
The location is only a few hundred metres from the site of another explosion which happened only two days ago. That incident occurred outside a nightclub, injuring a member of the cleaning staff as rubble fell. The police are seeking a man identified on CCTV cameras in connection with Monday’s explosion after he was seen seemingly placing a burning blue bag at the scene beforehand.
Authorities have not indicated whether there is a connection between the two incidents, but according to daily Bild, the investigators do suspect a connection. A similar explosive device was used in both cases.
There has been a series of small explosions in recent months across the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, where Cologne is located. The explosions—including the blowing up of ATMs—happened outside residential and commercial buildings in the cities of Düsseldorf, Solingen, Engelskirchen, and Duisburg, as well as Cologne.
Criminal gangs and drug cartels from the Netherlands, which borders North-Rhine Westphalia, may have been involved. As Michael Mertens, head of the GdP police union’s state branch said:
The Dutch drug mafia has been here for a long time. North Rhine-Westphalia as a transport hub is a key location. What you have to realise is that these perpetrators are extremely brutal.
The crimes are thought to have been carried out by the so-called “Mocro mafia” whose members are significantly more prone to violence than the crime groups and Arabic clans in Germany. The term “Mocro mafia” was adopted by the media in both the Netherlands and Germany for several organised crime groups that originally arose from the Dutch Moroccan community in the 1990s.
German police have warned of Dutch organised crime networks moving into Germany.
