Olaf Scholz has pledged to speed up deportations after a suspected Islamist knife attack in the city of Solingen.

Friday night’s deadly stabbing at a street festival has reignited a debate over immigration in the country and put extra pressure on the German chancellor ahead of key regional elections this week.

“This was terrorism, terrorism against us all,” Mr Scholz said on a visit to Solingen, where he laid flowers at a memorial to the victims.

A 26-year-old Syrian with suspected links to the Islamic State group is alleged to have carried out the attack, which left three people dead and eight more wounded.

Mr Scholz said he was “angry… at the Islamists who threaten our peaceful coexistence.

“We will now have to tighten up the weapons regulations… in particular with regard to the use of knives.”

Stronger weapons controls would come “very quickly”, Mr Scholz said.

Germany would also 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.

The suspect, named as Issa Al H, was able to evade the police after the attack before reportedly handing himself in to law enforcement on Saturday evening.

The Syrian was detained on suspicion of murder, attempted murder and belonging to a “terrorist group”.

The Islamic State group on Saturday said one of its members had carried out the attack in an act of “revenge”.

The group subsequently published a video via the jihadists’ Amaq news agency purporting to show the Solingen attack, in which the veiled man said he intended to carry out reprisals for “massacres” in the Middle East and beyond. The claim could not be immediately verified.

The incident has raised concerns in Germany for the seeming ease with which the attacker avoided authorities’ attempts to deport him.

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.

He was meant to have been deported to Bulgaria, where he had first arrived in the European Union, but he went missing.

The suspect was not known to German security services as a dangerous extremist, according to officials.

According to federal police figures, almost 52,976 people were supposed to be deported or expelled from Germany last year.

Successful deportations, however, only took place in 21,206 instances – less than half of the total planned. This was often because the individuals concerned were “not handed over” to police.

The attack has spurred a new debate around immigration in the EU’s most populous country ahead of regional elections in Saxony and Thuringia, where the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) is expected to make gains.