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German far-right street mob alarms police in Chemnitz Germany migrants: Merkel condemns 'vigilantes' after Chemnitz murder
(about 4 hours later)
Extra police have been sent to Chemnitz in eastern Germany after hundreds of far-right protesters marched through the city centre and scuffles broke out. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said "vigilante justice" will not be tolerated after far-right unrest over a murder in the eastern city of Chemnitz.
A far-right football fan group called Kaotic Chemnitz called supporters on to the streets after a German man aged 35 was fatally wounded in a fight. Police said several foreigners were involved. Scuffles have broken out during two days of protests by hundreds of people in the city centre since a German was stabbed to death early on Sunday.
Kaotic Chemnitz - banned from the local club's stadium - said it wanted to "show who is in charge in the city!" Police have arrested a Syrian man and an Iraqi man on suspicion of murder.
A city festival was ended abruptly. A far-right football fan group called Kaotic Chemnitz called out supporters to show "who is in charge".
The German government strongly condemned the far-right mobilisation. Video clips posted on Twitter show protesters chanting "We are the people!" and "This is our city!"
Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert said "ganging up like that, hunting down people who look different or have a different ethnicity, attempts to spread hatred on the streets - we won't accept that". Some reports also speak of aggressive protesters chasing foreigners, though there are few details.
Chemnitz police estimated the mob to consist of about 800 protesters and said some were hostile towards the police and threw bottles. The spontaneous rally caught police by surprise. Bottles have also been thrown by protesters at police, who were reinforced by officers from other cities.
Extra police were called in from Dresden and Leipzig to restore order in the city centre.
Chemnitz is in Saxony, a region where the far-right, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) and Pegida are particularly strong.
It is not clear what the fight that triggered the protest was about. It took place at about 03:15 (01:15 GMT) on Sunday and two other German men were seriously hurt, police said.
Police denied rumours on social media that the fight was linked to the sexual harassment of a woman.
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Video clips posted on Twitter showed protesters chanting far-right slogans "we are the people!" and "this is our city!" What happened?
Some reports also spoke of aggressive protesters chasing foreigners, though there were few details. It is unclear what triggered a fight which reportedly preceded the stabbing, at about 03:15 (01:15 GMT) on Sunday, on the sidelines of a street festival, which has now been cancelled.
An AfD MP, Markus Frohnmaier, tweeted that "when the state can no longer protect its citizens they go into the streets and protect themselves". The victim, 35, was mortally wounded and died in hospital.
"Today it's a citizen's duty to stop the lethal 'knife migration'!" he wrote, alluding to the influx of migrants in recent years. "It could have targeted your father, son or brother!" he added. Two other German men with him, aged 33 and 38, were seriously hurt, police say.
Chemnitz mayor Barbara Ludwig, a centre-left Social Democrat (SPD) politician, condemned the protest, saying "it was supposed to be a peaceful city party - we had a special occasion, the city's birthday". The Syrian detainee is 23 and the Iraqi 22.
"I'm incensed over what happened here on Sunday." Police have denied rumours on social media that the fight was linked to the sexual harassment of a woman.
How did protests spread?
Initially, about 100 people gathered on Sunday for a rally which passed off without incident, AFP news agency reports.
However, some 800 people later gathered at the Karl Marx monument, a focal point in the centre of Chemnitz.
The monument is a throwback to the city's days as a model socialist city in the former German Democratic Republic, when it was renamed Karl-Marx-Stadt.
It appears that such a large, angry demonstration took police by surprise.
Freelance journalist Johannes Grunert told Spiegel Online he had witnessed some protesters using bottles to attack people "who did not look German".
Pegida, the far-right street movement, called for a new demonstration on Monday afternoon, while an MP from the far-right political party AfD, Markus Frohnmaier, tweeted: "If the state is no longer to protect citizens then people take to the streets and protect themselves. It's as simple as that!"
"Today it's a citizen's duty to stop the lethal 'knife migration'!" he wrote, alluding to the influx of migrants in recent years. "It could have targeted your father, son or brother!"
What did Merkel's office say exactly?
"We don't tolerate such unlawful assemblies and the hounding of people who look different or have different origins and attempts to spread hatred on the streets," Mrs Merkel's spokesman, Steffen Seibert, told journalists.
"That has no place in our cities and we, as the German government, condemn it in the strongest terms. Our basic message for Chemnitz and beyond is that there is no place in Germany for vigilante justice, for groups that want to spread hatred on the streets, for intolerance and for extremism."
Martina Renner, an MP for the radical Left party, accused the far right of seeking to exploit the murder for political ends.
"A terrible murder, the background to which is still unclear, is being instrumentalised in the most repugnant way for racist riots in Chemnitz," she said in a tweet.
Why is the migrant issue so thorny?
In 2015, Angela Merkel decided to let in around 1.3 million undocumented migrants and refugees, mainly from parts of the Middle East like Syria and Iraq.
She and her allies were punished by voters at last year's general election when the anti-immigrant AfD entered parliament for the first time, winning 12.6% of the vote and more than 90 seats.
Chemnitz is in Saxony, a region where AfD and Pegida are particularly strong.