In an arson attack in the German city of Recklinhausen, Monday, February 13, 2023, people set fire to clothes worth thousands of dollars donated to earthquake victims in Turkey and Syria, local media reported.
A video clip shared on social media platforms showed the storage where all the donated clothes were stored was stormed by arsonists, burned the clothes collected by the volunteers.
As per a report by Middle East Eye, Vijay Raj, who runs the Ani store where the incident occurred, told Marler Zeitung, that his store had received a lot of clothing and cash donations for the earthquake victims in Turkey and Syria.
“Our dreams of donating these clothes and the money were shattered when two boys of European descent entered the store and set it on fire,” Raj explained.
He added, “We also found two Turkish flags that we were hanging, which were thrown into the fire and burned with the donations.”
Raj explained that he no longer accepts donations in tangible form, and asked people to give him money to give to charitable organizations working on the ground.
On Saturday, February 11, the German Interior Ministry said it would offer relatives of current Turkish migrants and Syrian refugees temporary visas to come to Germany from disaster areas.
“This is emergency aid,” German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser told the Bild newspaper on Saturday. “We want Turkish or Syrian families in Germany to bring their close relatives from the disaster area to their homes without bureaucracy.”
At dawn on Monday, February 6, double earthquakes, hours apart, struck southern Turkey and northern Syria, the first measuring 7.7 degrees and the second 7.6 degrees, and hundreds of violent aftershocks, which left vast losses of lives and property in both countries.
