Anti-immigrant attacks in Cologne injure three

Two Pakistanis and a Syrian man were injured in attacks by gangs of people in Cologne, Germany, the city where the vast majority of dozens of New Year Eve assaults on women took place.

Local newspaper Express reported that the attackers coordinated via Facebook to meet in downtown Cologne to start a “manhunt” of foreigners. 

The assaults on women in Cologne and other German cities have prompted more than 600 criminal complaints, with the police investigation focusing on asylum seekers and migrants.

The assaults, ranging from theft to sexual molestation, have prompted a highly charged debate in Germany about Chancellor Angela Merkel's open-door policy on refugees and migrants, more than one million of whom entered the country last year.

Cologne police said a group of about 20 people attacked six Pakistanis on Sunday evening, injuring two of them. In another incident a few minutes later, a group of five people attacked and injured a Syrian man, police said.

On Monday, a regional parliamentary commission in the state of North-Rhine Westphalia, whose largest city is Cologne, will question police and others about the events on New Year's Eve.

The anti-Islam political movement, PEGIDA, whose supporters threw bottles and firecrackers at a march in Cologne on Saturday before being dispersed by riot police, will hold a rally in the eastern German city of Leipzig on Monday evening. At the Saturday rally, the group accused police of failing to prevent assaults during New Year's festivities.

The New Year's Eve attacks on women in Cologne have also sparked a debate about tougher rules for migrants who break the law, faster deportation procedures and increased security measures such as more video surveillance in public areas and more police.

On Dec. 31, witnesses described terrifying scenes of hundreds of women being abused by groping hands, lewd insults and robberies amid the mob violence.

Cologne's police drew criticism both for their response and for their slowness to release information. Police chief Wolfgang Albers was dismissed Friday by North Rhine-Westphalia state's interior minister, Ralf Jaeger.

At a session Monday of the state legislature's home affairs committee, Jaeger said Cologne police hadn't called in reinforcements who were offered.

Jaeger said that witness and police reports “indicate that it was almost exclusively people with an immigrant background who committed these crimes.”

Of the 19 suspects identified by name by Cologne police, 10 were asylum-seekers and the other nine were believed to be in Germany illegally, according to a report Jaeger submitted to the committee. None was registered as living in Cologne, and four are now in custody for robberies committed during the New Year events.

In Sweden, where police are also investigating New Year's Eve assaults in the city of Kalmar, police confirmed reports there had also been widespread sexual assaults at a music festival in Stockholm last summer. Stockholm police spokesman Varg Gyllander refused to give the nationality of the suspects, but did say “this involves young men who are not from Sweden.”

Al Jazeera and wire services