“They see hatred and fear between religions”. “We can do it”, she reiterated.
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Merkel returns to Berlin to hold a news conference at 12 p.m. (1100 GMT) after a spate of attacks since July 18 left 15 people dead – including four attackers – and dozens injured.
“The attacks are harrowing, depressing and depraved”, Merkel said, adding that “terrorists want to destroy our ability to live together harmoniously”.
She repeated her rallying cry from past year when she opened the borders to people fleeing war and persecution, many from Syria, which brought almost 1.1 million migrants and refugees to the country in 2015. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has criticized Merkel, saying her policies are reckless.
She also admitted that even a powerful country like Germany cannot take so many refugees in the long term..
Yet, at the same time, she made it clear there will be no U-turn in the state’s policies with regard to migrants.
Earlier Thursday, officials in Bavaria – the scene of three of the four attacks, and a state whose governor has always been critical of Merkel’s welcoming approach to refugees – pledged to hire hundreds of extra police officers and urged tougher background checks on asylum-seekers as they presented an anti-terror plan following the four attacks. The fourth attack, by a Syrian refugee who killed a woman south of Stuttgart, was unrelated to terror activity, police said.
Asked why she had not been to the attack sites, she said: “That’s a question that I obviously ask myself whenever something happens”. Two attackers were asylum seekers with links to Islamist militants.
The German Chancellor interrupted her summer holidays to defend her open-door refugee policy following recent attacks in Germany.
The bloodiest incident, a shooting spree in Munich on July 22 that killed 10 people including the assailant, was unrelated to global terror. She believed that terrorists are pushing for Germany to lose their vision of what is truly important.
Germany will “stick to our principles” and “give shelter to those who deserve it”, said Merkel, who cut short her summer vacation to speak after a string of Islamist attacks in the country.
But she offered few details on new measures, which she said would be discussed in the days and weeks ahead. The AfD was already polling at 19 percent in the state prior to the assaults, while the CDU was at 25 percent.
The attacks have stoked concerns about an unprecedented immigration flow into Germany, as well as drawing strong criticism for Merkel’s administration for failing to properly address national security issues associated with it.
“We have achieved a lot in the past 11 months,”she said”.
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She said Germany owed it not just to the victims, relatives and other Germans, but also to the refugees.
