(AP) German Chancellor Olaf Scholz vowed to toughen knife laws and step up deportations of rejected asylum-seekers Monday as he visited the scene of the knife attack in which a suspected Islamic extremist from Syria is accused of killing three people.
Scholz, speaking after he joined regional officials in laying a white rose at a makeshift memorial in the western city of Solingen, said he was “furious and angry” about the attack, in which eight people also were wounded.
The suspect turned himself in to police on Saturday evening, a day after the attack at a festival marking the city’s 650th anniversary. Federal prosecutors said Sunday that he shared the radical ideology of the Islamic State group, which he joined at a point that remains unclear, and was acting on those beliefs when he stabbed his victims repeatedly from behind in the neck and upper body.