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.
