Police say five people were severely injured in violent clashes between Iraqi Kurdish Yazidis and Chechen asylum-seekers in the central German city of Bielefeld.
Police said in a statement Sunday the religious minority group and the Chechens were living in the same refugee shelter and went after each other with truncheons and knives on Saturday night.
Reports indicate that the Chechens, who are Muslim, attacked the Yazidis. The Yazidis are a Kurdish religious group linked to Zoroastrianism and Sufism. The religious has roots that date back to ancient Mesopotamia, are considered heretics by the hard-line Islamic State group. They currently live primarily in Iraq’s Kurdistan region and the Nineveh Province of northern Iraq.
Five people had to be treated in hospital for traumatic brain injury, a fractured hand, stabbing wounds and facial bone fractures.
Local media reported that about 15 Chechens and 15 Yazidis were involved in the brawl at the Oldentruper Hof refugee shelter where there had been a dispute between residents earlier in the week.
Two Chechen men, aged 24 and 42, were detained and all Yazidi and Chechen families were taken from the shelter and placed in other shelters in different cities overnight.
Later Saturday night, about 100 Yazidi Kurds tried to forcibly enter the shelter, some armed with clubs and knives, reportedly looking for Chechen families to take revenge, according to local media. The police, with the assistance of translators, contained the Yazidis behind a roadblock.
Police are still investigating the cause for the outbreak of violence.
Ezidi Press reported that Yezidis and Christians have faced repeated attacks at refugee centres in Germany.
Islamic State group has captured most parts of the Yazidi Sinjar (Shingal) district in northwest Iraq on August 3, 2014 which led thousands of Kurdish families to flee to Mount Sinjar, where they were trapped in it and suffered from significant lack of water and food, killing and abduction of thousands of Yazidis as well as rape and captivity of thousands of women.
According to the United Nations Islamic State enslaved an estimated 7,000 women and girls in 2014, mainly the Kurdish Yazidi women and children, and is still holding 3,500 as slaves.
The EU, US and UK parliament recognize Islamic State killing of Yazidi Kurds as ‘Genocide’.
ekurd.net
