Angela Merkel under fire over assaults

Chancellor’s refugee policy blamed for New Year’s Eve sex attacks

German Chancellor Angela Merkel came under mounting pressure on Wednesday over her welcoming stance toward migrants, which opponents have linked to a shocking rash of apparently coordinated sex attacks in Cologne on New Year’s Eve.

The police in the western city said they have received more than 100 complaints by women reporting assaults ranging from groping to two rapes, allegedly committed in a large crowd of revellers during year-end festivities outside the city’s main train station and its famed Gothic cathedral.

Victims blamed men of “Arab or North African” appearance, inflaming a heated public debate about Germany’s ability to cope with the nearly 1.1 million asylum seekers the country took in in 2015.

Authorities have said there is no concrete indication that the perpetrators were asylum seekers who arrived in the record 2015 influx.

No arrests have been made.However critics of Ms Merkel’s liberal refugee policy charged that the Cologne assaults proved she was playing with fire without a clear strategy to integrate the mainly Muslim newcomers who will settle in Germany.

The right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which hopes to gain seats in three regional elections in March, charged the attacks were “a result of unchecked immigration”.

Late Tuesday 200 to 300 people, according to police estimates, gathered in front of Cologne cathedral calling for more respect for women.