Merkel faces backlash over asylum policy Angela Merkel

Berlin. – A rash of attacks in Germany has emboldened political rivals of Chancellor Angela Merkel (pictured), blaming her liberal asylum policy for exposing the country to a shocking week of bloodshed. Four brutal assaults in Ger-many’s south, three of which were carried out by asylum seekers, have rattled Germans and revived a backlash against Merkel’s decision last year to open the borders to those fleeing war and persecution.

“It all appeared to be going pretty well for Merkel but the situation has changed dramatically in the 10 days between the Nice attack and Sunday’s suicide bomber in Ansbach,” the daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung wrote, referring to attacks in France and Germany claimed by the Islamic State (IS) group.

“The chancellor must once again fear that she will be punished by the voters,” with two pivotal state polls looming in September. Merkel’s aides were quick to point out that three of the four assailants arrived in Germany before the record influx that brought in more than one million refugees and migrants last year.

The fourth, a teenager who went on a shooting rampage in Munich on Friday killing nine before turning the gun on himself, was born and raised in Germany, the son of Iranian asylum seekers who arrived in the 1990s.

Investigators say he was obsessed with mass killings, including Norwegian right-wing fanatic Anders Behring Breivik’s 2011 massacre, and have ruled out an Islamist motive.

The violence reignited political friction that had eased as the number of new arrivals to Germany slowed to a trickle in recent months due to the closure of the Balkans migration route and an EU deal with Turkey to take back migrants.

“What we always warned of has now happened,” Frauke Petry, head of the rightwing populist AfD party, said in a statement.

Horst Seehofer, conservative premier of Bavaria state which saw three of the attacks, called into question the principle that asylum seekers should never be sent back to war zones. He later backtracked, citing international law.

Meanwhile, a patient shot a doctor in a university clinic in Berlin on Tuesday before killing himself, but there were “no signs at all” of a link with Islamist militancy, police in the German capital said.

Germany is on edge because of a spate of violent attacks on civilians by men of Middle Eastern or Asian origin since July 18 that have killed 10 people. Islamic State militants claimed responsibility for two of those four attacks before yes- terday.

Berlin police said the doctor had sustained life-threatening injuries in the attack at the Benjamin Franklin campus of the Charite University Hospital in the southwest of the city and died shortly afterwards.

They added that the situation at the hospital in Berlin’s Steglitz district was now “under control” and investigators were on the scene to determine the background to the crime.

“There is currently no danger,” police said on Twitter. Winfrid Wenzel, a spokesman for Berlin police, said the crime took place in the jaw surgery area of an outpatient clinic where the doctor was in a treatment session with the patient. – AFP/Reuters.

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