BERLIN (AP) — A member of a German far-right party was stabbed and wounded in the southwestern city of Mannheim, German news agency dpa reported Wednesday, just days after a knife attack killed a police officer and injured five other people. same city.
Dpa reported that a candidate from the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, allegedly caught someone trying to tear down an election poster on Tuesday evening. When he confronted the person, he was attacked with a knife. Dpa reported that the candidate was still in a hospital with non-life-threatening lacerations.
The candidate, who was campaigning for Sunday’s local elections in the state of Baden-Württemberg, where Mannheim is located, was not identified. The attacker was detained, dpa reported.
“We are shocked and appalled,” local AfD leader Markus Frohnmaier told dpa.
Mannheim police confirmed an incident took place on Tuesday evening and said they would release more details later, dpa reported.
On Friday, a 25-year-old Afghan man stabbed several members of a group that describes itself as opponents of “political Islam.”
The group, Pax Europa, describes itself as an organization that informs the public about the dangers posed by the “increasing spread and influence of political Islam.” Michael Stuerzenberger, an anti-Islamist activist who is one of the group’s leading figures and has spoken at the events, was among those injured.
The attacker was still in hospital.
Tuesday’s attack is the latest in a series of attacks on politicians in the country, raising concerns about rising political violence in Germany.
Last month, Franziska Giffey, Berlin’s top economic official, former mayor and ex-minister, was attacked during an event at a local library by a man who approached her from behind and hit her with a bag containing a hard device. said.
A week earlier, a candidate from Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s party was beaten in the eastern city of Dresden while campaigning for this week’s European Parliament elections and had to undergo surgery.
Both ruling and opposition parties say their members and supporters have faced a wave of physical and verbal attacks in recent months, and have called on police to step up protection of politicians and election rallies.
In February, the German parliament said in a report that there were a total of 2,790 attacks on elected representatives in 2023. Representatives of the Greens were disproportionately affected in 1,219 cases, those of the AfD in 478 cases and representatives of the SPD in 420 cases.
The country’s vice-chancellor, Robert Habeck, who is a member of the Greens, was prevented from disembarking from the ferry for hours by a group of angry farmers in January, and the vice-president of the German parliament, Katrin Göring-Eckardt , also by The Greens. Greens was prevented from leaving an event in Brandenburg state last week when an angry crowd blocked her car.
