Merkel answered questions for the first time since four assaults-a shooting spree, axe attack, suicide bombing and machete assault-left 13 and sparked anxiety over terrorism and Germany’s refugee crisis.
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Merkel said Germany would be more strict in deporting asylum seekers whose applications had been rejected.
On July 18, a teenage Afghan asylum seeker slashed at passengers on a train in Wuerzburg with an ax and knife, wounding five.
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.
In a telephone talk, Obama expressed condolences over the attacks in southern Germany, the White House said, adding that the USA government offered its full support to Germany as the investigations into the recent violent attacks proceeded.
“They sow hate and fear between cultures and religions”.
Speaking in Berlin, Mrs Merkel said that “besides organised terrorist attacks, there will be new threats from perpetrators not known to security personnel”. In Munich, a German-Iranian killed nine people before killing himself.
In two other attacks – a mass shooting in Munich that claimed 10 lives, including the attacker’s, and the stabbing of a woman in a restaurant in Reutlingen – the motive is still unclear.
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24 July: A failed Syrian asylum seeker blows himself up outside a music festival in the small Bavarian town of Ansbach, injuring 15 other people.
