German Opposition Leader Vows Crackdown On People Entering Country

Germany's opposition leader vowed on Thursday to bar people from entering the country without the proper papers and ensure a steep increase in deportations if he is elected as chancellor next month, as a knife attack by a former asylum-seeker spilled over into the election campaign.

Two people, including a two-year-old boy, were killed and three injured in Wednesday's attack in the Bavarian city of Aschaffenburg.

"Yesterday's heinous attack in Aschaffenburg has caused great consternation throughout the country," said Friedrich Merz, the leader of Germany's opposition center-right Christian Democratic Union.

"This is yet another new quality of completely uninhibited brutality in Germany."

The suspect, who was arrested shortly afterward, is a 28-year-old Afghan who had come to authorities' attention before with violent incidents and had said over a month ago that he would leave the country voluntarily.

He apparently originally arrived in Germany via another European Union country, but efforts to send him back there failed.

The attack is politically sensitive a month before Germany’s national election.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz, whose center-left party trails in polls ahead of Germany's Feb. 23 election, met the heads of the country's security services Wednesday evening and said that they will "draw the necessary consequences. Now."

He didn't specify what those would be.

His main election challenger, Merz — whose center-right Union bloc leads polls — stepped up his party's vows to toughen migration policy Thursday morning.

Merz said Germany has had a “misguided asylum and immigration policy” for 10 years — when Angela Merkel, a chancellor from his own party and former Merz rival, allowed large numbers of migrants into the country.