German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Monday, August 26, pledged to tighten Germany's weapons laws and crack down on illegal immigration after a Syrian man allegedly went on a deadly knife rampage in the city of Solingen.
"We will now have to tighten up the weapons regulations... in particular with regard to the use of knives," Scholz said on a visit to Solingen, adding that "I'm sure this will happen very quickly". "We will have to do everything we can to ensure that those who cannot and must not stay here in Germany are repatriated and deported," he added.
Friday's attack at a street festival, which left three people dead and injured eight others, has shocked the country and fuelled a renewed debate about immigration ahead of key regional elections next weekend.
After a day on the run, a 26-year-old Syrian gave himself up to authorities late Saturday and confessed, police said. German anti-terrorism prosecutors have taken over the investigation and the man, named as Issa Al H., has been detained on suspicion of murder, attempted murder and belonging to a "terrorist group."
The Islamic State group said in a statement on Saturday that one of its members had carried out the attack in "revenge" for Muslims "in Palestine and everywhere." "The perpetrator of the attack on a gathering of Christians in the city of Solingen in Germany yesterday was a soldier of the Islamic State," said a statement from the jihadists' Amaq news agency on the Telegram messaging app. The claim could not be immediately verified.
According to the Bild and Spiegel news outlets, the suspect arrived in Germany in December 2022 and had a protected immigration status often given to those fleeing war-torn Syria.
German Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck said the suspect was not known to the security services as an extremist considered dangerous. Germany has been on high alert for Islamist attacks since the Gaza war erupted on October 7 with the Hamas attacks on Israel. The country has been hit by several such attacks in recent years, with the most deadly being a truck rampage at a Berlin Christmas market in 2016 that killed 12 people.
Solingen is a city of some 160,000 people located between Duesseldorf and Cologne. Thousands had gathered in Solingen on Friday for a "Festival of Diversity", part of a series of events to mark the city's 650th anniversary. The festival has now been canceled.
The attack has reignited a debate about immigration in the EU's most populous country ahead of regional elections next weekend in Saxony and Thuringia, two states in the former communist East Germany. The far-right, anti-immigrant AfD party, which is eyeing big gains in the state polls after recent electoral wins, has accused successive governments of having caused "chaos" by allowing in too many immigrants.
In the aftermath of the attack, Friedrich Merz, leader of the main opposition conservative CDU party, urged the government to stop taking in refugees from Syria and Afghanistan. Scholz's government had already been under pressure to resume deportations to both countries, after a halt of several years.
Members of Scholz's ruling coalition had called for tougher deportation rules after a 25-year-old Afghan stabbed a policeman to death in Mannheim in May, in an attack that targeted an anti-Islam rally.
Germany took in more than a million asylum seekers in 2015-2016 at the height of Europe's migrant crisis − a deeply divisive influx that fuelled the popularity of the AfD.