Shops looted and more than 100 police injured after riots in central Frankfurt

Police sealed parts of the city centre on Halloween night after a largely peaceful youth demonstration dissolved. Hesse's interior minister said most suspects arrested were aged 13 to 29.

Serious riots broke out in central Frankfurt on the night of Saturday 31 October after the largely peaceful dissolution of a Gen-Z demonstration, with shop windows smashed and shops looted. The unrest came on Halloween night. The organisers said they still intend to take part in the Europe-wide protests on 20 November.

Police cleared and cordoned off the Hauptwache, Konstablerwache and the Zeil on Saturday evening, temporarily sealing the Zeil between the two squares with police vehicles. The events later shifted toward Eschenheimer Tor and the Freßgass. Operation commander Erik Hessenmüller said a smaller group turned violent at the end of the demonstration. He attributed the later riots on the Zeil to a different group of people.

A weapons shop in central Frankfurt was attacked and looted. The police secured two weapons quickly and arrested several people, after which a special operations unit secured the shop. Near the Konstablerwache, the alarm went off at 22:58 at the running shop of Jost Wiebelhaus, whose front window, 7.5 by 2 metres, had been shattered. Wiebelhaus said he came to the shop shortly before eleven and that the looters were inside at that moment. The police secured the area with the SEK, and no one was injured.

Minister President Boris Rhein, the head of the Hesse state government, said he was shocked by the excesses of violence and announced consequences. 'Anyone who behaves like the attackers in Frankfurt city centre places themselves outside our society,' he said. Interior Minister Poseck said most of the arrested suspects were German citizens aged 13 to 29 and described the roughly 1,000 to 1,500 troublemakers as predominantly 'migrantisch geprägt', or shaped by migration. Frankfurt's Mayor Mike Josef did not focus on origin: 'I do not care at all what passport someone has or where their parents were born.'

The trade association for the affected retail sector sharply condemned the riots but said the mostly peaceful youth demonstration must be separated from the violence that followed. The association said the violence it had partly witnessed was no longer driven primarily by political protest but by an almost intoxicating joy in rampaging and destroying for its own sake. Jost Wiebelhaus estimated the damage to his running shop at 30,000 to 40,000 euros. More than 100 police officers were injured in the riots, one of them seriously according to one report.