The number of criminal charges made by police in the wake of the Cologne sex attacks increased dramatically in just one day yesterday.

On Friday, police had made 170 charges for the attacks in which women were sexually assaulted by migrant gangs on New Year’s Eve. By the end of Saturday, however, that number had rocketed to 379, thanks mainly to Cologne police increasing the number of personnel investigating the crimes.

The sudden rise will inevitably lead to questions as to why the city’s police force could not increase personnel sooner, especially after an attack of such a scale.

German paper Die Welt am Sontag says the increase in staff working on the case enabled Cologne authorities to deal with police in other German cities to apprehend the suspects. With many of the migrants involved in the attacks believed to have been simply passing through the city at the time, it has proved difficult to track them down.

Police have been focussing mainly on men of North African origin after the attacks on New Year’s Eve, which were only picked up by the world’s media after Breitbart London reported the testimony of the first victim to speak out.

More victims have since come forward to talk about about their ordeals, with one woman saying how the men treated them like “free meat at the supermarket, fair game”.

“There were hands that touched us, our butts and other parts of our bodies. It is simply indescribable. Never in my life before was I so afraid,” a woman named Selina told TV station SWR Fernsehen.

She said how the men, who “spoke Arabic overwhelmingly”, wanted “humiliation. Take my dignity. I don’t know. Make me afraid. I just don’t know. Satisfaction of sexual lust… I have no idea.”

Another woman said how she felt “dirty” and “used” after being molested by a gang of at least 30 men on New Year’s Eve.

“They all looked foreign. They managed to separate us in the crowd and got close to us… we tried to fight off their hands…. everywhere I looked I saw girls crying and being comforted.”