BERLIN – A fire damaged a former hotel that was being converted into a refugee home in eastern Germany and two people were detained after hindering firefighters' work, police said Sunday, days after an incident in the same state in which a mob blocked a bus carrying asylum-seekers.
The blaze at the roof of the building in Bautzen, in the eastern state of Saxony, broke out overnight for reasons that remain unclear. Police said no one was injured, but a group of people gathered outside, some of them "commenting with derogatory remarks or unashamed joy" on the fire.
Police ordered three people to leave the scene because they were hampering firefighters' work and detained two of them, whom they described as intoxicated 20-year-old locals, after they ignored the order.
While the majority of Germans have been welcoming toward refugees, a vocal minority has staged protests in front of asylum homes, especially in the east. Saxony is home to the anti-Islam and anti-immigration group PEGIDA.
Across the state in Clausnitz, a mob screaming "We are the people!" and "Go home!" on Thursday blocked a bus carrying asylum-seekers outside a new refugee home. Police drew criticism in that case for roughly hauling some migrants off the bus into the building, which they insist was necessary to prevent the situation from escalating.
Saxony Governor Stanislaw Tillich described the two incidents as "appalling and shocking" and described the perpetrators as "criminals."
"This is abhorrent and disgusting," Tillich said in an interview with the Funke newspaper group. He pledged that authorities will investigate and "bring everyone responsible to account."
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