2 people are killed in a knife attack in Germany. Scholz says there must
be consequences
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 [January 23, 2025]
By GEIR MOULSON
BERLIN (AP) — Two people, including a 2-year-old boy, were killed and
three others injured in a stabbing attack in Bavaria on Wednesday. The
suspect, a former asylum-seeker who was supposed to be leaving Germany,
was arrested.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that authorities must clear up why the
suspect was still in the country. He said the attack, a month before a
national election in which curbing irregular migration is a major issue,
must have consequences.
The attack occurred just before noon in a park in Aschaffenburg, a city
of about 72,000 people. Bavaria's top security official, Joachim
Herrmann, said the assailant attacked the boy, who was part of a group
of kindergarten children, with a kitchen knife.
He said the 2-year-old of Moroccan origin was killed, along with a
41-year-old German man who was passing by and appeared to have
intervened to protect the other children. Bavarian officials said two
adults and a 2-year-old Syrian girl were injured and taken to a hospital
for treatment, and none of their lives were in danger.
Other passers-by chased the suspect and he was arrested 12 minutes after
the attack, Herrmann said.
He said the suspect, a 28-year-old Afghan national, had come to
authorities' attention at least three times because of acts of violence.
On each occasion, he was sent for psychiatric treatment and later
released.
The suspect is believed to have arrived in Germany in November 2022 and
applied for asylum in early 2023, Herrmann said. On Dec. 4, he told
authorities that he would leave the country voluntarily and would seek
papers from the Afghan consulate. A week later, German authorities
formally closed asylum proceedings and told him to leave.
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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 Hettler/dpa via AP)
Police will work over the coming days to identify his motive,
Herrmann said, adding that suspicions so far point to his
psychiatric illness. A first search of his room at a refugee home
found no evidence that he had radical Islamic views, and only turned
up medicine that would fit with his psychiatric treatment, he said.
The attack is politically sensitive a month before Germany's
national election.
Scholz issued a strongly-worded statement condemning what he called
“an incomprehensible act of terror.”
“I am tired of such acts of violence happening here every few weeks
— by perpetrators who came to us to find protection here,” he said.
“Mistaken tolerance is inappropriate here. Authorities must clear up
at high pressure why the attacker was still in Germany at all.”
That must lead to “immediate consequences — it is not enough to
talk," Scholz added. He didn't elaborate.
Following a knife attack by an Afghan immigrant in Mannheim in May
that left a police officer dead and four more people injured, Scholz
vowed that Germany would start deporting criminals from Afghanistan
and Syria again. He vowed to step up deportations of rejected
asylum-seekers following a knife attack in Solingen in August in
which a suspected Islamic extremist from Syria is accused of killing
three people.
At the end of August, Germany deported Afghan nationals to their
homeland for the first time since the Taliban returned to power in
2021.
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Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin contributed to this report.
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