A 28-year-old Afghan man has been arrested after a knife attack in a park in the German city of Schaffenberg that killed two people, including a toddler, in what the country’s Chancellor Olaf Schulz called an “act of terrorism.” was condemned as .
With a month left in a snap election campaign dominated by debate over immigration and asylum policy, Schulz called on authorities to “immediately explain why the attacker was still in Germany”.
A two-year-old boy and a 41-year-old man who allegedly tried to help the child were killed, police said. Two other victims were seriously injured in the stabbing, the motive of which was not immediately clear, police said, adding that the investigation is still in its early stages.
According to local media reports, the attacker targeted a group of children from a day care center who were in the park. Der Spiegel news agency reported that the suspect lived in a shelter in the area. Other media reported that the man had been treated for psychiatric problems.
Poll frontrunner Friedrich Merz, head of the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), said he was deeply shocked by the violence. “This cannot go on,” he said in a statement. “We must and will restore law and order.”
Else Weidel, co-leader of the far-right Alternative for Deutschland, which is second in the polls, posted on X: “Emigration now!” citing his party’s highly controversial call for mass deportations of migrants and asylum seekers.
Train service in Schaffenberg was briefly suspended as the suspect tried to run along the tracks, but was quickly taken into custody by police.
Scholz described the violent attack as an “unfathomable act of terrorism” that “needs immediate consequences – just talking is not enough”.
“I am sick of these acts of violence happening every few weeks,” he said in a statement. “Of the attackers who came to us for protection. Toleration of wrongdoing is completely inappropriate.”
Markus Söder, the conservative prime minister of Bavaria, where the attack took place, called it a terrible day for his state and condemned the “cowardly and despicable act” in a post on X.
A second man, who was taken into custody, was being offered as a witness, and there were no immediate indications that the attacker had accomplices.
It was the latest in a series of violent attacks in Germany, fueling calls for tighter security ahead of the February 23 election.
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A month ago, a Saudi doctor with far-right, anti-Muslim sympathies was arrested after he rammed cars into a Christmas market in the eastern city of Magdeburg, killing six people and injuring nearly 200.
In June, a policeman was killed after he allegedly intervened in a knife attack by an Afghan man at an anti-Islam rally in Mannheim in the southwest.
And in August, three people were killed and eight injured in a mass stabbing at a street festival in the western city of Solingen. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, and police arrested a Syrian suspect.
After the attack, just weeks before three key state elections, the Scholes government tightened laws on knives in public places, limited benefits for asylum seekers and allowed faster deportations. Act for those whose asylum claims have been rejected.
Merz’s CDU has vowed to impose a hard line on immigration, including a de facto ban on new asylum applications at the border.
