German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said illegal migration into Germany “must come down” after a Syrian man who arrived in Germany as an asylum seeker was charged with killing three people in an attack in the western town of Solingen last week.
“This is terrorism, terrorism against all of us,” Mr Scholz said during a visit to Solingen on Monday.
Mr Scholz also said his government would have to “do everything possible to ensure that those who cannot and should not stay in Germany are repatriated and deported” and that deportations would be accelerated if necessary.
He also promised to tighten gun laws “very quickly”.
The political fallout from the tragedy began to spread across Germany as officials confirmed that the suspect in Friday’s deadly stabbing was a Syrian refugee.
The alleged attacker – identified as Issa Al H., 26 – is suspected of having links to the Islamic State terrorist organization.
The already heated debate over immigration has now become even more intense.
A day after the attack, conservative opposition leader Friedrich Merz demanded an end to the admission of refugees from Syria and Afghanistan and called for full control of Germany’s borders.
Alice Weidel, leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, has gone one step further and wants to end all migration altogether.
Experts say such proposals are unfeasible and inconsistent with German and European Union law.
Mr Scholz’s ruling centre-left SPD party said Germany remained committed to its legal and humanitarian commitments to help people fleeing persecution.
But his government has also pledged to deport migrants who have committed serious crimes and those whose asylum claims have been rejected.
The suspect in the Solingen attack arrived in Germany in 2022 as a Syrian refugee. Normally, Syrians have a good chance of being granted asylum in Germany.
But his application was rejected and he was ordered deported to Bulgaria, because he had registered as a refugee there. Officials said that when they tried to deport him, they could not find him and he remained in Germany.
Now there is controversy over who is responsible for that failure.
Germany does not normally deport people back to unsafe or war-torn countries like Syria or Afghanistan – that would involve negotiating with the Taliban government. But there are calls for that to change.
Germany has been embroiled in a contentious debate over migration for years. Local councils say their budgets are strained. There have also been calls to speed up the application process and allow refugees to work earlier, which some say will help them integrate into German society.
Given the large number of refugees Germany has taken in, the country has generally coped well and this year the number of asylum seekers appears to have fallen.
However, Germany typically takes in hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers each year.
In 2023, just over 350,000 people applied for asylum. In addition, around 1.2 million Ukrainians have arrived in Germany since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.
Compared to other countries that accept few refugees, terrorist attacks involving asylum seekers in Germany are very rare.
The most recent major incident occurred in 2016, when 12 people were killed when an Islamic extremist drove a truck into a Christmas market in Berlin.
But this latest attack could have huge political implications.
On Sunday, two large states in eastern Germany – Saxony and Thuringia – will hold important regional elections.
The AfD party, hoping to do well and even win the most votes, is now using this attack as part of its election campaign.
Hours after the stabbing, the AfD party – referring to the party’s regional leader in Thuringia, Björn Höcke – posted a video on social media with the words “Höcke or Solingen”.
