Two men are waiting for their lunch inside a drafty airport hangar -- one is an 80-year-old from Pakistan, the other an 18-year-old Albanian. A throng of people are waiting and the line can take up to an hour, but the young man has run out of patience. He climbs over the barrier and pushes forward, gets his food and then sits down at a table. A short time later, the elderly man addresses him angrily.
A dispute that began banally enough on Sunday, Sept. 27, ended in a mass brawl after the young Albanian hit the old man in the face. A security guard intervened and was able to pull the two apart, but three hours later, 50 to 60 Pakistanis stormed into the hangar and threatened the young Albanian with aluminum rods they had taken from their cots. The police moved in and were initially able to restore peace. Come dinner time, though, 300 angry Albanians had turned up. Some attacked the Pakistanis, benches were thrown, men struck each other with clubs and used pepper spray.
Police estimate that more than 350 of the 1,500 refugees staying in the emergency shelter at the Calden Airport near the city of Kassel became involved in the fight. The incident resulted in 14 injuries, including police officers. Two weeks prior, another altercation at Calden left 60 people injured. Read on and comment » | Matthias Bartsch, Markus Deggerich, Horand Knaup, Ann-Katrin Müller, Conny Neumann, Barbara Schmid, Fidelius Schmid, Wolf Wiedmann-Schmidt and Steffen Winter | Tuesday, October 6, 2015
