Mrs Merkel, who interrupted her summer holiday to hold the news conference in Berlin, said the asylum seekers who had carried out the attacks had “shamed the country that welcomed them”.
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The attackers “wanted to undermine our sense of community, our openness and our willingness to help people in need”.
‘They see hatred and fear between cultures and they see hatred and fear between religions. “We stand decisively against that”, she said. The 90-minute press conference was dominated by questions about the four assaults – a shooting spree, axe attack, suicide bombing and machete strike – that left 13 dead and sparked anxiety over terrorism.
Mrs Merkel described the four attacks as “shocking, oppressive and depressing” but insisted they were not a sign that authorities had lost control.
She outlined a nine-point security plan, which she said includes a lower threshold for the deportation of failed asylum seekers, an “early warning system” for radicalization among refugees and the deployment of soldiers in domestic counterterrorism operations.
The CSU government in Bavaria, where three of the attacks took place, on Thursday formulated its own counter-terrorism strategy, saying it would hire 2,000 new police officers by 2020 and introduce tougher screening of refugees. But, she said, “fear can not be a counsel for political action”.
“I did not say that it would be an easy task”, Merkel told reporters about finding a solution to the refugee crisis, adding she had expected challenges ahead when she made the decision to open borders last summer. That attacker was not an asylum seeker, however.
“We do know that the Islamic State use the refugee movements, that they… have used it to also make it possible for terrorists to enter”.
The series of attacks has stirred up further doubts in Germany about the wisdom and consequences of Berlin’s open-door asylum strategy, that brought over one million people into Germany a year ago.
The attacks have burst any illusions in Germany that the country is immune to attacks like those claimed by Islamic State in neighbouring France.
The teenager who carried out the Munich shooting, meanwhile, was a German-Iranian who prided himself on sharing a birthday with Adolf Hitler and appeared to have targeted foreigners.
It follows a chaotic week in which an asylum seeker purportedly from Afghanistan went on a stabbing rampage in Würzburg and an asylum applicant from Syria blew himself up outside a music festival in Ansbach.
Obama expressed condolences “on behalf of the American people for the victims of recent terrorist and other violent attacks”, according to a readout of the call from the White House.
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Merkel’s response is in stark contrast to that of French President Francois Hollande, who quickly rushed to the scene of recent attacks, including at a church in Normandy where two jihadists executed a priest.
