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Seven-year-old Necati Karki had gathered with his family as part of a crowd in their neighbourhood in northern Berlin when a treacherous new addition to the New Year’s Eve festivities went off: a “firework bomb”.
Fired out of a pipe by unknown assailants and possibly deliberately aimed at the targets, the illegally imported pyrotechnic – called a kugelbombe (spherical bomb) – flew straight into the group of mainly women and children, injuring eight. Karki has undergone at least three operations and is still fighting for his life, with horrific injuries to the lower half of his body, one of his adult brothers reported on Instagram.
“I’m from a place where terrible things happen every day, but what they allow to happen here is really a catastrophe,” said a Kurdish refugee from Turkey who runs a local bakery which was still open when the kugelbombe went off just after midnight.
Over the 25 years she has lived in Germany, she said she has seen the year-end celebrations turn ever scarier.
The 55-year-old, who declined to be named, “didn’t sleep for three nights” after the new year’s disaster.
At least five people were killed and dozens more injured by fireworks across Germany on New Year’s Eve, as part of a dangerous trend where private citizens acquire professional-class pyrotechnics online from countries whose laws are more lax, or use
fireworks that have been altered for more spectacular effect.
The shocking toll has added urgency to appeals across Europe to stop the private use of fireworks, which campaigners argue routinely maims revellers, terrorises pets and wildlife, exacerbates pollution and overburdens the emergency services.
The charged debate gathered momentum when a German petition to ban private use of fireworks, launched by a police union, collected about 2m signatures in just a few days. However, next month’s general election appears to be blocking any drive toward reform.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz, fighting an uphill battle for re-election, called the initiative to outlaw personal pyrotechnics “strange”, given the pastime’s decades-long tradition in Germany. Among the mainstream parties, only the Greens have taken up the call to rethink a “freedom” often compared to the country’s speed limit-free autobahns.
Although experts criticise both practices as reckless indulgences with clear negative consequences for the population at large, German politicians question them at their peril.
“Fireworks, like cars, are a fetish,” wrote Susanne Memarnia in the left-leaning daily Tageszeitung. “That’s why, in the motherland of rules (another fetish), you have explosives laws that allow an exception on New Year’s Eve, whatever the cost.”
On Emstaler Square in the capital’s Tegel district, which has long grappled with tensions between Germans, migrant families and asylum seekers in its publicly subsidised housing, residents appeared to be uniting around a compromise proposal.
“You don’t have to ban fireworks – you can just set up zones for people who want to have fun, but not in the middle of a residential neighbourhood in the city,” said Andreas Ross, whose veterinary practice had its windows blown out by the kugelbombe blast. Many in the community interviewed by the Guardian backed similar suggestions.
However, a look across the border to the Netherlands, where the laws on fireworks are more restrictive, shows how difficult it can be to root out the practice. More than 1,100 people – including more children than ever before – were injured by fireworks on New Year’s Eve, while two people died.
Pablo Kouwen, 12, was clearing the street on New Year’s Day when he picked up what he thought was an unexploded illegal firecracker.
“I lit it, but something went wrong and it just went ‘boom!’ in my hand,” he said. “For 40 seconds I just saw flashes in front of my eyes and I couldn’t hear. Then I looked at my hand and there was blood everywhere.”
His 41-year-old mother, Corrina, believes Pablo was lucky to only suffer nerve damage and third-degree burns to his hand. “Illegal fireworks – which are available everywhere – need to disappear,” she said. “They are a risk to life and limb. Plenty of people were a lot less lucky, and some even died. Fireworks are beautiful in the sky, but there’s no point in firecrackers and bombs.”
Kouwen, a reality TV participant and member of the Traveller community in Steenbergen, North Brabant, isn’t the only Dutch person keen to talk about the dangers. Tiring of how the existing regulations are often widely ignored, many residents of Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague want national prohibition and a Europe-wide crackdown.
This is not, however, a position endorsed by the government, headed by Geert Wilders’ far-right Freedom party (PVV), which in November stressed that a crackdown on explosives and “heavy” fireworks did not mean a consumer ban. The four parties in coalition all oppose a ban, saying such a move would be an affront to freedom and “tradition”.
Martijntje Bakker, chief executive of Dutch consumer safety institute VeiligheidNL, said it was time for a new tradition to replace fireworks that threaten children’s safety, negatively affect the environment and cost a small fortune. “People always talk about this firework tradition in the Netherlands, but it’s only about 50 years old,” she said.
Her organisation is concerned about the rise in under-16s who needed needing emergency medical attention as a result of fireworks misuse on New Year’s Eve; during the 2023 celebrations, 31% of those requiring emergency medical attention were aged under 16, while the figure rose to 37% for
2024. Certain fireworks have been banned since 2020, but still flow from other countries. “In the first year [of the Covid pandemic], fireworks were prohibited in the Netherlands, but also in Belgium and Germany,” she said. “The number of injuries reduced dramatically: we had 383 casualties.
“Around 60% of the Dutch are against consumer fireworks now, but there’s no support from the political parties in the government [who] are afraid they will lose votes,” she added.
Dutch authorities are seeing increased usage of illegal fireworks more commonly seen in drug gang warfare. Explosive attacks rose fivefold from 212 in 2021 to 1,017 in 2023, 80% of them involving so-called Cobra “bangers”. “These fireworks have the power of a military explosive such as TNT and devastating effects, especially when used in combination with fuel,” said police in November.
Before Christmas, police in The Hague, the HagaZiekenhuis hospital and local fire service mounted a joint campaign warning that the consequences of amputations, blinding and burns last a lifetime. “There is also regularly violence towards emergency services on New Year’s Eve,” a hospital spokesperson said – a phenomenon also observed in Germany.
In December, an explosion apparently aimed at a bridal shop in The Hague left six people dead. Mayor Jan van Zanen said: “We are really sick of it, the damage to our entire society is enormous. Last New Year’s Eve, officers were once again pelted with fireworks, there were injuries and even two deaths. And the availability of fireworks causes terrible incidents and attacks at other times.
“This cannot continue. We must stop consumer fireworks and tackle the illegal trade at a European level.”
