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BERLIN — A trade union representing police officers in Germany voiced shock yesterday after thousands of anti-Islam football hooligans fought running battles with police in the western city of Cologne the previous day. The self-styled “Hooligans Against Salafists” rally marked the worst rioting yet by a new alliance where Germany’s far-right groups have recruited violence-prone football fans to their anti-foreigner cause.

Police who detained 17 of the 4,000-strong crowd for acts of violence had to employ water cannon, baton charges and tear gas on Sunday afternoon to regain control of the crowd, which at one point overturned a police van outside Cologne’s main railway station.

“If this grouping consolidates and grows further, then I’d say we face a new type of violence,” warned Arnold Plickert, head of the North Rhine Westphalia state chapter of the GdP police union.

He said previous “hooligans” demonstra-tions had only attracted a few hundred radicals and few had expected the alliance to scale up so fast. The football fans organised with the help of online social media.

The police union charged that police commanders had not expected a crowd of 4,000 and were unable to arrest many who committed offences.
At least 44 police officers were injured in scuffles and by stones, bottles and fireworks thrown at them.

The demonstrators’ declared target was the Salafist movement within Sunni Islam, a fundamentalist faction that is perceived in Germany as associated with the Islamic State rebel group in Iraq and Syria.

“The fight against Salafism is just an alibi,” said Plickert.
Germany’s justice minister Heiko Maas vowed to crack down on both rightists and Salafists who resorted to violence on German streets.— Sapa-dpa.