The main suspect in the knife attack that took place on Wednesday in a park in the German city of Aschaffenburg is a 28-year-old man of Afghan origin. The police detained him shortly after the attack near the scene of the crime, reported the AFP agency, from which TASR drew.
The motive for the attack is still under investigation, but according to initial information, it could also be a manifestation of the suspect’s mental illness. According to the police, a search of the asylum center where the detainee lived did not yield results no evidence of possible radical Islamist attitudes of the attacker. However, the investigators in his cases they found psychiatric drugs. In the attack in the park in Aschaffenburg a 41-year-old man and a two-year-old child lost their lives.
Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann informed at a press conference in Aschaffenburg that A 41-year-old bystander lost his life trying to protect a group of children in a park from a man, who attacked them with a kitchen knife. The second victim – a two-year-old child – is of Moroccan origin, according to Herrmann. Three other people were taken to hospital for treatment after the attack. Among them is a two-year-old Syrian boy who suffered a cut to his neck. Bavarian Health Minister Judith Gerlach added that these injuries are not “serious”.
The second injured person – an adult – had to undergo surgery for multiple chest wounds. A kindergarten teacher who broke her arm while trying to escape from the attacker is also hospitalized. Minister Herrmann stated that the suspect came to the attention of authorities for violent behavior on three different occasions and he was sent for psychiatric treatment. He came to Germany in 2022 and he unsuccessfully applied for asylum there. He was supposed to leave Germany at the end of last year.
Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz condemned this “unbelievable act of terror” in Aschaffenburg and asked the media why the failed asylum seeker was allowed to stay in the country.
The latest in a series of knife attacks in Germany took place a month before the parliamentary elections. It is supposed to run a new wave of discussions about immigration and its risks. Scholz’s center-left Social Democrats are currently trailing the conservative CDU/CSU bloc and the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the polls. Both more successful parties in surveys they promise their voters a crackdown on immigration.
“It can’t go on like this,” Conservative leader Friedrich Merz declared on the X social network. “We must restore law and order – and we will,” he promised in his response to the attack in Bavaria. AfD leader Alice Weidel published a status on the X network in which she called for remigration – it is a termwhich according to AFP the extreme right uses in its calls for the mass deportation of migrants.
