Merkel said she had never heard of negotiators reaching a compromise three months before the end of talks. Germany has taken in more than 1.3 million refugees, asylum seekers, and others since previous year, including many fleeing Syria and elsewhere.
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Officials in Bavaria – where three of the attacks took place – are calling for tougher screening of refugees and the reversal of a government policy not to deport people to conflict zones.
A suicide bombing and separate machete attack occurred in the country on Sunday following a shooting at a shopping mall on Friday, according to CNN.
The President spoke today by phone with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany to express his condolences on behalf of the American people for the victims of recent terrorist and other violent attacks in southern Germany.
Critics have attacked Merkel’s decision to allow refugees to enter the country, saying there were insufficient checks.
Merkel could now face increased calls for tighter border security and greater vetting of arrivals, even though the flow of migrants and asylum seekers has slowed drastically, said Florian Otto, an analyst with the risk consultants Verisk Maplecrof.
She remains a steady, unemotional leader who said recently: “Fear has never been a good adviser, neither in our personal lives nor in our society”.
Last week, Berlin was the target of four terrorist attacks.
The worst recent attack was in Munich on 22 July when nine people were killed by a German teenager of Iranian extraction.
He had been under psychiatric treatment and investigators say he was obsessed with mass shooting, including Norwegian righ-wing fanatic Anders Behring Breivik’s 2011 massacre.
The unprecedented bloodshed began July 18, when a 17-year-old from Afghanistan wielding an ax attacked people on a train near Wuerzburg, wounding five people before he was shot to death by police.
Two of them, including the attack at a wine bar in Ansbach, had a link to the so-called Islamic State.
She said the attacks had shown the “taboos of civilization” had been broken.
“We are awaiting urgent action from the federal government and Europe – now is the time to act”.
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.
Merkel’s popularity had suffered earlier this year, following a rash of sexual assaults in the western city of Cologne on New Year’s Eve blamed mainly on Arab and North African men. A deal the European Union struck with Turkey this year is a key reason for the decrease in the flow of refugees to Germany.
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While it’s unclear who created the page, it appears to be poking fun at German nationalists who regularly use social media to accuse the chancellor of trying to harm her own country.
