News

Aid Collected for Turkey Earthquake Victims Set on Fire in Germany

Police are chasing two suspects caught on CCTV, one of whom was also filmed setting fire to a Turkish flag at the same time.
Dipo Faloyin
London, GB
​A firefighter attempts to put out the blaze.
A firefighter attempts to put out the blaze. Sc German Police

German police are looking for two suspects who they believe deliberately set fire to a pile of donations that had been collected for victims of the Turkish and Syrian earthquakes. 

The aid, which included clothes and canned foods, was gathered inside a Turkish supermarket in North Rhine-Westphalia, a state in western Germany. CCTV footage of the attack shows one of the suspected arsonists throwing a Turkish flag into the fire, which took two hours to put out. 

“On Sunday night, unknown persons intentionally set fire to goods stored on the premises of a supermarket on Bahnhofstrasse,” a police statement said. “The Recklinghausen police have video recordings that presumably show two suspects on the premises.”

The police estimate that the fire has caused around €20,000 ($21,000, £18,000) worth of damage. The owners of the Anı Markt supermarket, which has offered a €5,000 reward for anyone with information, had become a popular spot for people to donate aid to a tragedy that has claimed over 38,000 lives and left more than a million people homeless.