DON’T HARM REFUGEES, WARNS GOVERNMENT

‘WE’RE DOING ALL OF THESE THINGS TO PROTECT THE POPULATION IN GERMANY.’ — ANGELA MERKEL SPOKESMAN

BERLIN A string of attacks on women in Cologne on New Year’s Eve blamed largely on foreigners was “intolerable,” Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman said Monday, but “nothing excuses” retaliatory assaults on immigrants.

Merkel has proposed making it easier to deport i mmigrants i nvolved in crimes, and her spokesman Steffen Seibert emphasized the government is looking into both “possible consequences for criminal law ( and) possible political consequences for the intolerable crimes.”

But after Cologne police said a group of Pakistanis and a Syrian were attacked in the city on Sunday, Seibert said Germans must not blame all the nearly 1.1 million migrants who entered the country last year, and said the government is also focused on their welfare.

“We’re doing all of these things to protect the population in Germany,” he said. “We are also doing this for the great majority of innocent refugees who have sought refuge from bombs and war in our country, and who should get this protection and who are prepared to adapt to the rules and values in our country.”

The six Pakistani nationals were attacked Sunday by around 20 people and two of them were briefly admitted to a hospital, police said.

Also Sunday evening, five people attacked a Syrian man, who was injured but didn’t need treatment.