Firefighters were tackling a blaze in the early hours of Thursday morning at the Berlin-Tiergarten town hall in the German capital, believed to have been started by anti-Israel vandals.
Emergency services responded to a call made at 1:45 a.m. by a witness who heard glass shatter before a room adjacent to Jonasstraße erupted in flames. Two suspected perpetrators were then seen jumping down from scaffolding attached to the building and fleeing the scene.
Around 30 firetrucks attended the scene and extinguished the blaze; no injuries were reported.
An initial investigation found the fire was likely started by a Molotov cocktail being thrown through the broken window, leaving extensive damage to the targeted room and the hallway of the building while parts of the affected exterior wall crumbled due to the heat.
According to Bild, Several threatening messages had been scrawled on the sides of the building that read, “If Gaza burns, Berlin burns.” Others read “Free Hamas” and “Warning Berlin, we’ll burn it down.”
A spokeswoman for the Berlin police office revealed the investigation had been taken over by state security services, who are investigating intentional arson.
Pro-Palestine protests by far-left and Muslim activists have erupted across Europe following Israel’s retaliation for Hamas’ terror attack on Israeli soil on Oct. 7 last year.
On Wednesday, troubling scenes were witnessed in the Netherlands after an activist mob stormed the University of Amsterdam and demanded it cut all ties with Israeli institutions.
Significant damage was done to the university, and footage showing activists attacking people with planks of wood went viral on social media, causing Dutch conservative politician Geert Wilders to ask, “When did the Dutch people vote to let all those Jew-haters with sticks and beards in? Which election manifesto was that in? Why do we let them destroy the Netherlands?”
The protest was eventually dispersed by Dutch riot police, but activists then congregated on Rembrandtplein in the Dutch capital before further clashes with the authorities.
