Many mob attackers were migrants: govt

Germany yesterday said most suspects in the mob violence that marred Cologne's New Year's Eve celebrations were asylum seekers, fuelling calls to quickly deport criminal migrants.

Unsettled by a record refugee influx, Germany has reacted with shock to news that women had to run a frightful gauntlet of groping, insults and robberies in an aggressive and drunken crush of around 1,000 men.

A week after the chaotic scenes outside Cologne railway station, federal police said they had identified 31 suspects whose alleged offences were "mostly theft and causing bodily harm". Eighteen of them are asylum seekers, the interior ministry said. Among the suspects are nine Algerians, eight Moroccans, five Iranians, four Syrians, two Germans and one citizen each from Iraq, Serbia and the US.

Victims and eyewitnesses had since the beginning blamed men of "Arab or North African" appearance, inflaming a heated public debate about Germany's ability to integrate the nearly 1.1 million asylum seekers it took in last year.