Two people, including a 2-year-old boy, were killed and three others injured in a stabbing in Bavaria on Wednesday. The suspect, a former asylum seeker who was supposed to be leaving Germany, was arrested.
Prime Minister Olaf Scholz said authorities needed to find out why the suspect remained in the country. He said the attack, which came a month before a national election in which curbing irregular immigration is a key issue, was bound to have consequences.
‘Random’ stabbing at German festival leaves 3 dead, others injured: Report
The attack occurred just before noon in a park in Aschaffenburg, a city of about 72,000 people. Bavaria’s top security official, Joachim Hermann, said the assailant attacked the boy, who was part of a group of kindergarteners, with a kitchen knife.
He said a two-year-old child from Morocco and a 41-year-old German man who was passing by and appeared to have intervened to protect the other children were also killed. Bavarian authorities said two adults and a two-year-old Syrian girl were injured and taken to hospital for treatment, but their injuries were not life-threatening.
Other passersby chased the suspect and he was arrested 12 minutes after the attack, Herman said.
A rescue vehicle is seen near the crime scene where two people were killed in a knife attack in Aschaffenburg, Germany, Wednesday, January 22, 2025. (Ralph Hetler/DPA, via AP)
He said the suspect was a 28-year-old Afghan national who had come to the attention of authorities at least three times for violent behavior. Each time he was sent for psychiatric treatment and later released.
Hellmann 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 he was leaving the country voluntarily and would seek documentation from the Afghan consulate. A week later, German authorities officially closed the asylum process and ordered him to leave the country.
Herman said police will spend the next few days determining his motive, adding that so far the charges point to mental illness. An initial search of his room at the refugee home found no evidence that he held extremist Islamic views, only medication compatible with psychiatric treatment, he said.
The attack is politically sensitive, coming 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 acts of violence happening every few weeks by perpetrators who come to us here seeking protection,” he said. “Misguided leniency is inappropriate here. Authorities must forcefully find out why the attackers were still in Germany in the first place.”
That “must have immediate consequences. Talking is not enough,” Scholz added. He did not elaborate.
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Scholz said Germany would start deporting criminals from Afghanistan and Syria again after a knife attack by Afghan migrants in Mannheim killed one police officer and injured four others in May. I swore that I would. He vowed to step up deportations of rejected asylum-seekers after a knife attack in Solingen in August by a suspected Islamic extremist from Syria who was suspected of killing three people.
At the end of August, Germany forcibly returned Afghan nationals to their homeland for the first time since the Taliban took power in 2021.
