BERLIN : A far-right German MP was seriously injured in a "politically motivated" gang attack in the north of the country, the police said yesterday.

Mr Frank Magnitz, leader in Bremen of the anti-immigration populist party Alternative for Germany (AfD), was assaulted in the city centre on Monday afternoon.

"Given the victim's work, we believe this is a politically motivated act," the police said.

AfD published a photo of Mr Magnitz unconscious on a hospital bed, his face bleeding and swollen with a gash on his forehead. It said three masked men had carried out the attack.

"They hit him with a piece of wood until he was unconscious and then kicked him on the ground," a statement from the party said, adding that a construction worker had intervened to stop the assault.

"Today is a dark day for democracy in Germany."

AfD leader Joerg Meuthen tweeted that Mr Magnitz was "beaten almost to death" in a "cowardly and sickening" attack.

Mr Johannes Kahrs, an MP from the Social Democrats, junior partners in the ruling coalition, said "violence is never acceptable" and "extremism in any form is rubbish". He wished Mr Magnitz a quick recovery.

Mr Cem Ozdemir of the opposition Greens party said he hoped those responsible could be "found and convicted soon" and that, even against a far-right party, "nothing justifies violence".

"Those who fight hate with hate only allow hate to win in the end," said the politician of Turkish origin.

Last week, an explosive device detonated in a rubbish bin damaged an AfD office in Saxony. Three suspects were detained.

And last weekend in Lower Saxony, the home of a local AfD politician was targeted with graffiti and a party office was attacked with a paint bomb. </s> MUENSTER, Germany: The man who drove a camper van into a group of people sitting outside a restaurant in the German city of Muenster on Saturday acted alone and appears to have had mental health problems, the regional interior minister said on Sunday.

The man killed two people when he ploughed the vehicle into people seated at tables outside the Grosser Kiepenkerl eatery, a popular destination for tourists in the old town of the university city in western Germany. He then shot himself dead.

"We now know it was in all likelihood a lone perpetrator, a German," Herbert Reul, interior minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, home to Muenster, told reporters.

"There are lots of indications the person in focus had (psychological) abnormalities. This must be carefully investigated," he said after paying his respects to the victims with national Interior Minister Horst Seehofer and state premier Armin Laschet.

There was no evidence of any link to Islamist militancy and the suspect was not a refugee, Reul said.

Broadcaster ZDF said police were searching his apartment and that he had contact with far-right extremists, but there was no evidence thus far that he was a far-right extremist himself.

In Berlin in December 2016, a Tunisian whose request for asylum was turned down and who had links to Islamist militants hijacked a truck and ploughed into a crowded marketplace. Twelve people, including the man driving the truck when it was hijacked, were killed.

Police said on Sunday they were still investigating possible motives and forensic investigators were scouring the scene of the attack for clues.

Seehofer described the attack as a "cowardly and brutal crime". He, Laschet and Reul laid flowers in central Muenster and paid their respects to the victims of the attack.

"We have again experienced that ... absolute security is unfortunately not possible," Seehofer said, adding that the government would do everything possible to protect citizens.

Police said the perpetrator was aged 48. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported in its online edition that he was Jens R., who resided some 2 km (1.2 miles) from the crime scene.

A 51-year-old woman from the Lueneburg area in northern Germany and a 65-year-old man from the Borken area near Muenster were killed.

Chancellor Angela Merkel said in a statement she was "deeply shaken". In the months prior to the Berlin assault, Germany suffered a number of small-scale Islamist militant attacks, which some linked to Merkel's decision in 2015 to open the country's borders to an influx of migrants, many of them refugees from conflicts in the Middle East.

Saturday's attack in Muenster came a year to the day of a truck attack in Stockholm in which a suspected Islamist militant sympathiser links killed five people.

On Saturday evening, the White House issued a statement sending U.S. President Donald Trump's "thoughts and prayers" to the families of those killed.

French President Emmanuel Macron tweeted: "All my thoughts are with the victims of the attack in Muenster. France shares in Germany's suffering". </s> BERLIN
• A far-right German MP was seriously injured in a "politically motivated" gang attack in the north of the country, police said yesterday.

Mr Frank Magnitz, leader in Bremen of the anti-immigration populist party Alternative for Germany (AfD), was assaulted in the city centre on Monday afternoon.

"Given the victim's work, we believe that this is a politically motivated act," the police said.

The AfD party published a photograph of Mr Magnitz unconscious on a hospital bed, his face bleeding and swollen with a gash on his forehead.

It said three masked men had carried out the attack.

"They hit him with a piece of wood until he was unconscious and then kicked him on the ground," a statement from the party said, adding that a construction worker had intervened to stop the assault. "Today is a dark day for democracy in Germany."

AfD leader Joerg Meuthen tweeted that Mr Magnitz was "beaten almost to death" in a "cowardly and sickening" attack.

Mr Johannes Kahrs, an MP from the Social Democrats, junior partners in the ruling coalition, said that "violence is never acceptable" and that "extremism in any form is rubbish".

Mr Cem Ozdemir of the opposition Greens party said he hoped those responsible could be "found and convicted soon" and that "nothing justifies violence".

"Those who fight hate with hate only allow hate to win in the end," added the politician, who is of Turkish origin.

Last week, an explosive device detonated in a rubbish bin damaged an AfD office in Saxony. Three suspects were detained.

And last weekend in Lower Saxony, the home of a local AfD politician was targeted with graffiti while a party office was attacked with a paint bomb.

The AfD entered Germany's Parliament with almost 13 per cent of the vote in September 2017, making it the strongest opposition party in the Bundestag Lower House.

The party is expected to make gains in European elections in May and three regional polls in the former communist east later this year. </s> The German daily Die Welt is reporting that police have foiled a knife attack on a half-marathon in Berlin.

The paper said special police forces detained four men in connection with Sunday's sporting event.

They said the main suspect was planning to killed participants and spectators with knives.

German news agency dpa reported that police confirmed arrests in connection with the half-marathon, but gave no further details.

Die Welt said the four suspects were linked to Anis Amri, a Tunisian man with Islamist militant ties who killed 12 people in an attack in Berlin in December 2016 when he hijacked a truck and drove it into a crowded marketplace.

The paper reported that the suspect, who was not identified, had prepared extra-sharpened knives to use in the attack.

Amri's attack in Berlin in 2016 had prompted German lawmakers to call for tougher security measures. No major Islamist militant attack has been carried out in Germany since.

Earlier on Sunday, Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said the government would do everything possible to protect citizens, but added: "We have again experienced that ... absolute security is unfortunately not possible."

Seehofer was speaking in Muenster, where a man drove a camper van into a group of people sitting outside a restaurant yesterday, killing two of them before shooting himself dead.

Authorities have said the attacker was a 48-year-old German citizen with mental health problems and that there was no indication of an Islamist militant connection. </s> German far-right lawmaker Beatrix von Storch is facing calls to resign after a series of controversial tweets about the van attack in Münster, including one post that falsely implied the perpetrator was a refugee.

Police reported that a 48-year-old German man who had previously expressed suicidal thoughts drove a van into a crowd in Münster on Saturday, killing two people before killing himself.

Before police had released any information about the man’s identity, von Storch — a deputy leader of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) — tweeted “wir schaffen das” in all caps, referencing Chancellor Angela Merkel’s mantra of “we’ll manage this” in defending her open-door refugee policy.

After authorities reported that the driver was German and that there was “no indication” of a link to Islamic terror, von Storch tweeted that the man was an “imitator of Islamist terror.”

The general secretary of Angela Merkel’s conservative Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), demanded on Monday that von Storch give up her seat in the Bundestag.

“If Mrs. von Storch has a shred of decency and reason, she should give up her mandate in parliament,” Markus Blume said, according to German media, adding that anyone who exploits the Münster attack in the way that von Storch did has “no business in a parliament in Germany.”

Herbert Reul, interior minister of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia where Münster is located, told radio broadcaster Deutschlandfunk that von Storch’s behavior was “irresponsible,” and said “one-sided hate-mongering” was harmful to the cohesion of society.

Von Storch’s comments also came amid a terror scare on Sunday, when Berlin authorities detained six men suspected of planning an attack on Berlin’s half-marathon event. But the suspects could be released after police found no weapons or explosives during searches, a police spokesperson told Die Welt, adding that authorities remain on “high alert.”

German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer on Monday warned that the country could face terror attacks in the future.

“We still have a very tense security situation in the Federal Republic of Germany,” Seehofer told German media. “That means: An attack is to be expected at any time.”

Seehofer has been a vocal critic of Merkel’s immigration policies and recently faced criticism for claiming Islam “does not belong in Germany.“ </s> Updated 6.50 pm

The van used in yesterday's attack is towed away last night Source: DPA/PA Images

GERMAN AUTHORITIES INVESTIGATING a deadly van ramming attack are focusing on the reported mental health problems of the driver, as the city of Muenster mourned for the two people killed on a sunny afternoon at an open-air restaurant.

“There are strong indications at the moment that this was a lone perpetrator and that there were no links to the terror scene,” federal Interior Minister Horst Seehofer told reporters at the site of yesterday’s attacks, where local people laid flowers in memory of the victims.

Far-right opponents of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s refugee policy had suggested in the immediate aftermath of the attack it might be an Islamist act of terror, while some media reported the killer had links to right-wing extremist organisations.

But there are “no indications of a political motive,” said Hajo Kuhlisch, chief of police in the western city where the attack took place.

Rather, he added, “the motive and origins (of the crime) lie within the perpetrator,” a 48-year-old German identified as Jens R. who shot himself dead immediately after the crime.

A source close to the investigation told AFP there was a record of incidents related to the perpetrator’s impaired mental health since 2015, and that he had talked of suicide in late March.

Prosecutors said he faced allegations of threats, property damage and fraud in 2015 and 2016, all of which were dropped.

And broadcaster NTV reported he had threatened family members with an axe in 2014 and 2015.

The two victims killed in Muenster were a 51-year-old woman and a 65-year-old man, both from northern Germany.

As well as the dead, police said 20 were injured — some life-threateningly.

Police officers outside the city's cathedral. Source: DPA/PA Images

The foreign ministry in the Netherlands said two of those hurt were Dutch, one of whom was in a critical condition.

In the van, police found the gun used by the driver to kill himself, a blank-firing pistol and some powerful fireworks.

A search of the man’s Muenster apartment late last night turned up more fireworks and a deactivated AK47 assault rifle.

Police have appealed to the public for information, setting up a website where people can upload photos and videos.

‘No Islamist connection’

Armed police cordoned off a wide area around the scene of the attack, urging residents to avoid the city centre to allow investigators to get to work amid initial fears the country had suffered another extremist assault.

“I was on my way home through the city here and saw firefighters and ambulances everywhere. I thought something really terrible must have happened,” said Hubert Reckermann, a local man in his late 60s.

“It’s still unbelievable for me, but these days anything can happen. You can’t really defend yourself against people with psychiatric problems.”

Germany has been on especially high alert for jihadist attacks after several claimed by the Islamic State group.

But “we know with high probability that it was a lone perpetrator, it was a German, not a refugee,” said North Rhine-Westphalia state interior minister Herbert Reul.

“We know with high probability that there was no Islamist background” to the attack, inflicted as locals and tourists enjoyed a sunny spring day, he added.

Flowers at the location of the van attack. Source: DPA/PA Images

‘Deeply shaken’

Merkel said she was “deeply shaken” by the incident and pledged that “everything possible will be done to determine what was behind this act and to help the victims”.

The presidents of Russia and France, Vladimir Putin and Emmanuel Macron, as well as Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy sent their condolences.

The attack is the latest in a string across Europe in which vehicles have been used to attack crowds of people in public places.

In a Berlin assault in December 2016, Tunisian asylum-seeker Anis Amri hijacked a truck and murdered its Polish driver before killing another 11 people and wounding dozens more by ploughing the heavy vehicle through a Christmas market.

He was shot dead by Italian police in Milan four days later while on the run.

In France, the Islamic State group claimed a 2016 truck attack in Nice on its July 14 national holiday that killed 86.

And in Spain, the jihadists also claimed a rampage along Barcelona’s Las Ramblas boulevard in August 2017 that killed 14 and left more than 100 injured.

© – AFP, 2018 </s> The man who drove a camper van into a group of people sitting outside a restaurant in the German city of Muenster on Saturday acted alone and appears to have had mental health problems, the regional interior minister said yesterday. The attacker had ties to far-right groups, but whether it played a role in the attack was unclear, German broadcaster ZDF reported, citing unnamed security sources.

The man killed two people when he plowed the vehicle into people seated at tables outside the Grosser Kiepenkerl eatery, a popular destination for tourists in the old town of the university city in western Germany. He then shot himself dead.

"We now know it was in all likelihood a lone perpetrator, a German," Herbert Reul, interior minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, home to Muenster, told reporters.

"There are lots of indications the person in focus had [psychological] abnormalities. This must be carefully investigated," he said after paying his respects to the victims with national Interior Minister Horst Seehofer and state premier Armin Laschet.

There was no evidence of any link to militancy and the suspect was not a refugee, Reul said.

Soon after the violent attack, Germany's far-right politicians blamed it on refugees, and shared anti-immigrant and Islamophobic messages on social media.

Far-right extremists reportedly stepped up their attacks against refugees in the country. More than 200 attacks on refugee shelters by far-right groups were reported across Germany in 2017. Far-right offenses in Germany have spiked to their highest level since 2001, amid growing anti-refugee and anti-migrant sentiment in the country triggered by propaganda from far-right parties.

The rise of the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which came in third in Germany's general election with nearly 13 percent of the vote, has compounded tensions. Founded more than four years ago as a eurosceptic party, the AfD has since lurched to the right, adopting a staunchly anti-Islam and anti-foreigner party platform. The AfD has enjoyed a surge of support in the wake of Chancellor Merkel's controversial decision two years ago to open the nation's borders to refugees stranded in Hungary.

In another example of the rising far-right threat in Germany, David Sonboly, 18, who killed nine people at a Munich shopping center in 2016, was motivated by extremist right-wing political ideology and anti-immigrant sentiments, investigators revealed a year later. Contrary to police findings, investigators believed that the motivation of the attacker was disregarded and underestimated, according to the German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW) in October 2017. German Police had concluded that Sonboly was a deranged lone gunman obsessed with mass killings who drew no inspiration from right-wing militancy. However, it was later revealed that the gunman was obsessed with far-right extremist Anders Behring Breivik, whose massacre of 77 people in Norway came exactly five years before his own shooting rampage. </s> Muenster attacker was lone German with mental health problems, says minister

Police block a street near a place where a vehicle drove into a group of people killing several and injured many in Muenster Germany, April 7, 2018. — Reuters picMUENSTER, April 8 — The man who drove a camper van into a group of people sitting outside a restaurant in the German city of Muenster yesterday acted alone and appears to have had mental health problems, the regional interior minister said today.

The man killed two people when he ploughed the vehicle into people seated at tables outside the Grosser Kiepenkerl eatery, a popular destination for tourists in the old town of the university city in western Germany. He then shot himself dead.

“We now know it was in all likelihood a lone perpetrator, a German,” Herbert Reul, interior minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, home to Muenster, told reporters.

“There are lots of indications the person in focus had (psychological) abnormalities. This must be carefully investigated,” he said after paying his respects to the victims with national Interior Minister Horst Seehofer and state premier Armin Laschet.

There was no evidence of any link to Islamist militancy and the suspect was not a refugee, Reul said.

The senior public prosecutor in Muenster, Elke Adomeit, said the perpetrator, who German media named as Jens R., was known to police for making threats, damaging property, a hit-and-run traffic accident, and fraud.

“All proceedings (against him) were discontinued,” Adomeit said.

Muenster police chief Hans-Joachim Kuhlisch said investigators had searched four apartments overnight belonging to the man, who was 48.

“You will understand that with four apartments - two in eastern Germany, two in Muenster - we can’t now say conclusively that we won’t find anything,” he said.

However, investigators found no signs of a political motive in their initial searches of the apartments and of several cars and a container belonging to the man, Kuhlisch said.

In Berlin in December 2016, a Tunisian whose request for asylum was turned down and who had links to Islamist militants hijacked a truck and ploughed into a crowded marketplace. Twelve people, including the man driving the truck when it was hijacked, were killed.

Police said on Sunday they were still investigating possible motives and forensic investigators were scouring the scene of the attack for clues.

Seehofer described the attack as a “cowardly and brutal crime”. He, Laschet and Reul laid flowers in central Muenster and paid their respects to the victims of the attack.

“We have again experienced that ... absolute security is unfortunately not possible,” Seehofer said, adding that the government would do everything possible to protect citizens.

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported in its online edition that the man, who it named as Jens R., resided some 2 km (1.2 miles) from the crime scene.

A 51-year-old woman from the Lueneburg area in northern Germany and a 65-year-old man from the Borken area near Muenster were killed.

Chancellor Angela Merkel said in a statement she was “deeply shaken”. In the months prior to the Berlin assault, Germany suffered a number of small-scale Islamist militant attacks, which some linked to Merkel’s decision in 2015 to open the country’s borders to an influx of migrants, many of them refugees from conflicts in the Middle East.

Yesterday’s attack in Muenster came a year to the day of a truck attack in Stockholm in which a suspected Islamist militant sympathiser links killed five people. — Reuters </s> The truck smashed into wooden huts serving mulled wine and sausages on Monday evening at the foot of the Kaiser Wilhelm memorial church, one of west Berlin's most famous landmarks. Forty-five people were injured, 30 severely.

Islamic State claimed responsibility the attack, saying the perpetrator was a "soldier" of the militant group.

"He executed the operation in response to calls to target nationals of the coalition countries," its AMAQ news agency said.

But Germany's interior minister said that despite the claim, investigators were following various leads.

"We just heard about the supposed claim of responsibility by this so-called Islamic State that is in fact a gang of terrorists," Minister Thomas de Maiziere told ARD broadcaster. "There are several leads that investigators are following now."

The Chief Federal Prosecutor's Office said in a statement it had been unable to prove that the suspect had been in the cabin of the truck at the time of the attack and said he had denied any involvement.

Earlier, Die Welt newspaper quoted an unnamed police chief as saying: "We have the wrong man. And therefore a new situation. The true perpetrator is still armed, at large and can cause fresh damage."

Commenting on the suspect's release, de Maiziere told ZDF television: "That's why it is true that one cannot rule out that the perpetrator is still at large."

He said there was no doubt the Berlin incident had been an attack but the motive remained unclear. He also said it was not yet known how many foreigners were among the victims of the attack but no children had been among the dead.

News of the arrest of the 23-year-old Pakistani had led politicians in Germany and beyond to demand a crackdown on immigration, but Chancellor Angela Merkel urged caution.

"There is much we still do not know with sufficient certainty but we must, as things stand now, assume it was a terrorist attack," she told reporters earlier on Tuesday.

"I know it would be especially hard for us all to bear if it were confirmed that the person who committed this act was someone who sought protection and asylum," she said.

The truck belonged to a Polish freight company and its rightful driver was found shot dead in the vehicle. The Polish truck driver had arrived hours earlier in the German capital and spoken to his wife about 3 p.m., according to his cousin.

When she called again an hour later, there was no answer.

"At 3.45 p.m. you can see the movement on the GPS (Global Positioning System). The car moved forward and back. As if someone was learning to drive it," said the cousin, Ariel Zurawski, who was also the boss of the trucking company.

Merkel joined hundreds of mourners on Tuesday evening at a memorial service at the church near the attack site. Her spokesman said she had spoken with the leaders of seven European countries and also with U.S. President Barack Obama, who all assured her of their support for Germany.

Security officials in Germany and Europe have warned for years that Christmas markets could present an easy target for militant attacks. In 2000, an al-Qaeda plan to bomb the Strasbourg Christmas market on New Year's Eve was foiled.

There were no concrete barricades at the Berlin Christmas market, as have been installed at a similar venue in Britain.

The attack fueled immediate demands for a change to Merkel's immigration policies, under which more than a million people fleeing conflict and poverty in the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere have arrived in Germany this year and last.

"We must say that we are in a state of war, although some people, who always only want to see good, do not want to see this," said Klaus Bouillon, interior minister of the state of Saarland and a member of Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU).

Horst Seehofer, leader of the CDU's Bavarian sister party, said: "We owe it to the victims, to those affected and to the whole population to rethink our immigration and security policy and to change it."

The record influx has hit Merkel's ratings as she prepares to run for a fourth term next year and has boosted support for the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD).

AfD leader Frauke Petry said Germany was no longer safe and "radical Islamic terrorism has struck in the heart of Germany."

The incident evoked memories of an attack in Nice, France in July when a Tunisian-born man drove a 19-tonne truck along the beach front, mowing down people who had gathered to watch the fireworks on Bastille Day, killing 86 people. That was claimed by Islamic State.

The influx of migrants to the European Union has deeply divided its 28 members and fueled the rise of populist anti-immigration movements that hope to capitalize on public concerns next year in elections in France, Germany and the Netherlands.

On Tuesday morning, investigators removed the black truck from the site for forensic examination. People left flowers at the scene and notes, one of which read: "Keep on living, Berliners!" One woman was crying as she stopped by the flowers.

Merkel said Germans must not be cowed by the attack: "We do not want to live paralyzed by the fear of evil."

"Even if it is difficult in these hours, we will find the strength for the life we want to live in Germany - free, together and open."

Other European countries said they were reviewing security.

Austrian Interior Minister Wolfgang Sobotka called for biometric and fingerprint checks to be introduced along the Balkan route used by many migrants arriving in Europe in order to better control foreign jihadist fighters' movements.

London police said they were reviewing their plans for protecting public events over the festive period.
German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer rejects claims that yesterday's car attack was an act of either Islamic or far-right terrorism, saying the attacker was not politically motivated.