A German mayoral candidate active in helping refugees on Saturday was seriously wounded in what police described as a stabbing with a “racist, political” motive, heaping further pressure on German Chancellor Angela Merkel over the migrant crisis.
The German leader expressed her “shock” over the attack in the western city of Cologne, which left mayoral hopeful Henriette Reker with serious neck wounds.
Reker, an independent close to Merkel’s ruling Christian Democrats (CDU) responsible for refugee issues in Cologne, was stabbed in the neck at a party information stand in the city.
Photo: AFP
Four other people were also injured, one of them seriously, with regional police chief Wolfgang Albers saying it was a “political act.”
The attacker was arrested at the scene and told police he had “a racist motivation for committing this act,” Cologne police official Norbert Wagner said at a news conference.
The stabbing came as Merkel yesterday prepared to travel to Istanbul, Turkey, for talks on the crisis with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has heaped scorn on Europe’s efforts to deal with the problem.
She has pushed for a fairer distribution of people across the EU, but the crisis has sorely tested ties between member states and put unprecedented strain on the right to free movement that is at the core of the 28-nation bloc’s values.
Slovenia on Saturday said it was drafting in the army to help police cope with an expected influx of thousands of migrants arriving after Hungary shut its border with Croatia in its latest move to stop the flow of people.
More than 630,000 people fleeing war and misery in the Middle East and Africa have landed on Europe’s shores this year, with many making risky sea crossings from Turkey to Greece.
Highlighting the human cost of the crisis, another 12 people drowned on Saturday when their wooden boat sank off the Turkish coast as they were trying to reach the Greek island of Lesbos, Turkey’s Anatolia news agency reported.
Most of the refugees and migrants are trying to get to Germany, Europe’s economic powerhouse, which has said it expects up to 1 million asylum seekers this year after saying it would open its doors to Syrian refugees.
Merkel’s policy has led to growing tensions in Germany, triggering a backlash from her conservative allies and spawning a growing number of increasingly vocal protests.
The flood of people seeking to reach northern Europe showed no signs of abating, with thousands of migrants seeking a new route through Slovenia after Hungary’s overnight border closure.
Croatia on Saturday began ferrying migrants by bus and train to Slovenia, away from the Hungarian frontier, and the Slovenian government said 2,700 men, women and children had entered its territory by late Saturday.
The tiny Alpine state says it can handle up to 8,000 refugees a day crossing through on their way to Austria, which has also reinforced its border ahead of the anticipated rise in the numbers.
Slovenian Prime Minister Miro Cerar has sent troops to the border with Croatia, but said they would simply help police with logistics and equipment, insisting the move “does not mean there is an extraordinary situation.”
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS