Two people, including a 2-year-old boy, were killed and three others injured in a knife attack in Bavaria on Wednesday. The suspect, a former asylum-seeker who was about to leave Germany, was arrested.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz said authorities must explain why the suspect is still in the country. He said the attack, coming a month before national elections in which curbing irregular migration is a key issue, would have consequences.
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The attack happened just before noon in a park in Aschaffenburg, a city of about 72,000 people. Bavaria’s top security official Joachim Herrmann said the attacker attacked the boy, who was part of a group of kindergarten children, with a kitchen knife.
He said a 2-year-old child of Moroccan origin was killed, as well as a 41-year-old German man who was passing by and intervened to protect other children. Bavarian authorities said two adults and a 2-year-old Syrian girl were injured and taken to hospital for treatment, and that neither of their lives were in danger.
Other passersby pursued the suspect and he was arrested 12 minutes after the attack, Herrmann said.
Rescue vehicles are seen near a crime scene in Aschaffenburg, Germany, Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025, where two people were killed in a knife attack. (Ralf Heitler/dpa via AP)
He said the suspect, a 28-year-old Afghan national, had come to the attention of authorities at least three times due to acts of violence. On each occasion, he was sent for psychiatric treatment and later released.
Herrmann said the suspect is believed to have arrived in Germany in November 2022 and applied for asylum in early 2023. On December 4, he told authorities that he would leave the country voluntarily and sought papers from the Afghan Consulate. A week later, German authorities formally closed asylum proceedings and asked him to leave.
Herrmann said police would work to identify his motive in the coming days, adding that suspicions so far point to his mental illness. The first search of his room in the refugee home found no evidence that he had radical Islamic views, and found only medication that was suitable for his psychiatric treatment, he said.
The attack is politically sensitive, a month before Germany’s national elections.
Scholz issued a strongly worded statement condemning what he called “an incomprehensible act of terrorism.”
“I’m tired of these incidents of violence happening here every few weeks – by criminals who came here to seek protection from us,” he said. “Toleration of wrongs here is inappropriate. The authorities must explain under high pressure why the attacker was still in Germany.”
“There must be immediate consequences – talking is not enough,” Scholz said. He did not elaborate.
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Scholz vowed that Germany would again start deporting criminals from Afghanistan and Syria after a knife attack by an Afghan immigrant killed a police officer and injured four other people in Mannheim in May. . He vowed to step up deportations of rejected asylum seekers after a knife attack in Solingen in August in which a suspected Islamic extremist from Syria is accused of killing three people.
In late August, Germany deported Afghan citizens to their homeland for the first time since the Taliban returned to power in 2021.
