Germany stunned by four attacks in a week
In this past week alone, Germany has seen as many as four terror attacks — that's an eye-brow raising, headline-grabbing development even by today's standards, where mass murderers going on the rampage in otherwise peaceful societies of the developed world even has become a grotesque routine. Paris, Brussels, Istanbul, Orlando, Nice… this list just keep growing, and that's without even mentioning the bloodshed that continues in the conflict zones on Syria or Iraq or Afghanistan. In Germany, the current bout of attacks began on July 18 when a teenage Afghan refugee hacked at passengers on a train in Wurzburg with an axe and knife. He wounded five and was shot dead by police. On July 22, another teenager, born in Germany to Iranian asylum-seekers, shot dead nine people at a mall in Munich before shooting himself dead. On July 24, a 21-year-old Syrian refugee fatally attacked a Polish woman with a machete and wounded five others in the city of Reutlingen. He has been arrested. That same day, in Ansbach town, a 27-year-old Syrian whose refugee application had been turned down, blew himself up outside a bar. At least 15 people were wounded. Is there a pattern emerging from these attacksIJ Depending on how you present your facts, the answer can be both, yes and no. On one hand, the Muslim immigrant connection is obvious; specifically, three of the four attackers were asylum-seekers. On the other hand, German police has not labeled all the attacks as jihadi terror — the Reutlingen attack is being considered as a crime of passion while the Munich attack, the deadliest of them all, is being seen as one committed by a mentally ill man, obsessed with mass murders. That said, the other two attacks have jihadi links: The Islamic State has claimed the Wurzburg attack while the Ansbach bomber, who was trying to get into a music festival, had earlier pledged allegiance to the terror group. Security analysts are still poring over the details and scrutinising new information as it become available.
However, the nuances of these attacks — was the gunman mentally deranged or was the bomber taking sorders of Syria — don't matter to the public. What matters to them is that German security has clearly been compromised. Indications were first seen in a series of sexual assaults and robberies in Cologne during the 2015 New Year celebrations. That caused much anxiety which is now changing into fear and anger. The German public has been divided over its Government's policy of allowing in large numbers of refugees, but these attacks have polarised them further. German chancellor Angela Merkel is coming under flak even though her Government has, in recent months, put in place stricter border controls and begun deporting suspicious individuals. This has led to a fall in refugees arriving in Germany but hasn't tempered the rhetoric of Right-wing parties, as they go into regional elections later this year and prepare for the federal election next year.