Deaths reported worldwide during New Year’s Eve celebrations

At least 11 people were killed and several injured during New Year’s Eve celebrations across the world on Thursday.

Eight young men and women were reported dead in a cottage in southwest Bosnia and Herzegovina, apparently from carbon monoxide poisoning during a New Year’s Eve celebration, police said on Friday.

Police responded to a call about 10am (09:00 GMT) and went to a house in Tribistovo where several people were found dead.

Bosnian and Croatian media said the eight were high school and university students.

In Turkey, Galatasaray’s Norwegian footballer Omar Elabdellaoui was hospitalised with eye injuries after an accident with fireworks.

Elabdellaoui injured both his eyes, according to Dr Vedat Kaya of Liv Hospital in Ankara.

While the Norwegian has not lost his sight, one eye was much more seriously injured than the other, Kaya said, adding that the player was “better today” but that it was too early to write off potential long-term consequences.

Meanwhile, in eastern France, a 25-year-old man was killed when fireworks exploded after he went to inspect them.

In Germany, at least one death was reported early on Friday of a 24-year-old man in the eastern town of Rietz-Neuendorf, who died when homemade fireworks detonated shortly after midnight.

Another case of improvised fireworks explosion left one man’s life in danger and two others injured near the western German city of Osnabrueck. They were working with explosives, trying to create a pyrotechnic, when there was an explosion shortly after midnight.

At least one more injury was reported in the central village of Springstille when a firework detonated prematurely late on Thursday.

After they were barred from setting off fireworks in public spaces, some Berliners instead tried to launch them from their homes on New Year’s Eve, leading to dozens of fires across the German capital.

Between midnight (23:00 GMT) and just six minutes later, the Berlin fire service said it was called to 18 fires, with more following deeper into the night. No one was initially reported seriously injured.

Meanwhile, police in the western city of Essen also reported being attacked with professional-grade fireworks by a gang of youths.

In Dortmund, a group of about 50 people caused a further ruckus: several of them emptied fire extinguishers in the street, threw fireworks at passing cars and set a rubbish container on fire.

Celebratory gunfire killed a Syrian woman living as a refugee in eastern Lebanon and struck an aeroplane parked at Beirut’s airport in two separate incidents, the Lebanese official news agency said on Friday.

At least one civilian was killed and 25 injured in celebratory gunfire and fireworks marking the New Year in different parts of Iraq, a health official said on Friday.

Fireworks were set off in several parts of the country despite a government ban on mass gatherings to contain the spread of the coronavirus.