Afghan in court over deadly knife attack on toddlers in Germany

(AFP) An Afghan man deemed psychologically ill faced a German court on Thursday over a deadly knife attack on a group of toddlers that his defence lawyer labelled the “deed of a madman.”

The stabbings nine months ago in a park in the southern city of Aschaffenburg killed a two-year-old boy and a 41-year-old man who tried to protect the children, and left three others wounded.

Prosecutors acknowledged that the 28-year-old who set upon the daycare group with a kitchen knife on January 22 was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia.

The attack, which came just a month before German national elections, inflamed an already heated debate on migration.

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