On 9 June 2004, a

nail bomb A nail bomb is an anti-personnel explosive device containing nails to increase its effectiveness at harming victims. The nails act as shrapnel, leading almost certainly to more injury in inhabited areas than the explosives alone would. A nai ...

detonated in

Cologne Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 million inhabitants in the city proper and 3.6 millio ...

, Germany, in a business area popular with immigrants from

Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with a small portion on the Balkan Peninsula in ...

. Twenty-two people were wounded, with four sustaining serious injuries. A barber shop was destroyed; many shops and numerous parked cars were seriously damaged by the explosion and by the nails added to the bomb for extra damage. Authorities initially excluded the possibility of a

terrorist attack Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of criminal violence to provoke a state of terror or fear, mostly with the intention to achieve political or religious aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violen ...

. The bomb, which contained more than 800 nails, was hidden in a travel compartment on a bicycle left in front of the barber shop. In November 2011, after having been accused by authorities of being responsible for a robbery in

Eisenach Eisenach () is a town in Thuringia, Germany with 42,000 inhabitants, located west of Erfurt, southeast of Kassel and northeast of Frankfurt. It is the main urban centre of western Thuringia and bordering northeastern Hessian regions, situat ...

, the neo-Nazi terrorist group

National Socialist Underground The National Socialist Underground (german: link=no, Nationalsozialistischer Untergrund, ), or NSU (), was a far-right German neo-Nazi terrorist group which was uncovered in November 2011. The NSU is mostly associated with Uwe Mundlos, Uwe Böh ...

(''Nationalsozialistischer Untergrund'') released a video claiming responsibility for the Cologne bombing. The group’s main members,

Uwe Böhnhardt Uwe Böhnhardt (1 October 1977, in Jena – 4 November 2011, in Eisenach) was a German right-wing extremist who was one of three core members of National Socialist Underground (NSU), a neo-Nazi terror group that included scores of associates pro ...

Uwe Mundlos Uwe Mundlos (11 August 1973 - 4 November 2011) was a German Neo-Nazi, right-wing terrorist and serial killer. Together with Uwe Böhnhardt and Beate Zschäpe, he formed the nucleus of the terrorist group National Socialist Underground (NSU), whi ...

, and

Beate Zschäpe Beate Zschäpe (; ; born 2 January 1975) is a German far-right extremist and a member of the National Socialist Underground (NSU), a neo-Nazi terrorist organization. In July 2018, she was sentenced to life imprisonment for numerous crimes com ...

, were also indicted with the killing of nine businessmen of Turkish and

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

origin between 2000 and 2006 (the

National Socialist Underground murders The National Socialist Underground murders (german: NSU-Mordserie) were a series of racist murders by the German Neo-Nazi terrorist group National Socialist Underground ('; abbreviated NSU). The NSU perpetrated the attacks between 2000 and 2007 ...

) and the murder of Michèle Kiesewetter in 2007. Böhnhardt and Mundlos died in a murder-suicide, leaving only Zschäpe to be charged (among other charges) for the attempted murder of 23 people in the Cologne bombing, in the NSU trial. The events of the 2017 film '' In the Fade'', starring

Diane Kruger Diane Kruger ( Heidkrüger; ; born 15 July 1976) is a German and American actress. Early in her career, Kruger gained worldwide recognition and received the Trophée Chopard from the Cannes Film Festival. Kruger became known for her roles in ...

as a German woman whose Kurdish husband and their child were killed in a nail bomb attack by Neo-Nazis, was inspired by the 2004 bombing.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cologne bombing 2004 crimes in Germany 2000s in Cologne Anti-Muslim violence in Europe Crime in North Rhine-Westphalia History of Cologne Neo-Nazi attacks in Germany June 2004 events in Europe Terrorist incidents in Germany in 2004 Building bombings in Germany Persecution of Turks in Germany

See also

References