Attacks: Merkel rules out migrant policy reversal

Recent attacks in Germany involving asylum-seekers would not change its willingness to take in refugees, Chancellor Angela Merkel has said.

She said the attackers “wanted to undermine our sense of community, our openness and our willingness to help people in need. We firmly reject this.”

But she did propose new measures to improve security.
These include information sharing, deciphering web chatter and tackling arms sales on the internet.
Two recent attacks in Bavaria were both by asylum seekers.

A suicide bomb attack in Ansbach on Sunday that injured 15 people was carried out by a Syrian who had been denied asylum but given temporary leave to stay, the BBC reports.

An axe and knife attack on a train in Wuerzburg on July 18 that wounded five people was carried out by an asylum seeker from Afghanistan.

Both men had claimed allegiance to so-called Islamic State.
The deadliest recent attack – in Munich on July 22 which left nine dead – was carried out by a German teenager of Iranian extraction but was not jihadist-related.


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