One Dead in Hamburg Stabbing Attack At least six others injured in rampage at supermarket By Anton Troianovski
https://www.wsj.com/articles/one-dead-in-hamburg-germany-stabbing-attack-1501268300
BERLIN—A rejected asylum applicant from the United Arab Emirates killed one person and injured six others in a stabbing rampage at a Hamburg supermarket on Friday, officials said, an attack that could reignite debate over security and immigration as the German election approaches.
The 26-year-old suspect, whose identity wasn’t released, couldn’t be deported because he lacked identity papers, Hamburg Mayor Olaf Scholz said in a statement late Friday.
“It further makes me angry that the attacker appeared to be someone who sought protection among us in Germany and then turned his hatred against us,” Mr. Scholz said. “This shows how urgently the legal and practical obstacles to deportation must be removed.”
The attack began in a supermarket in the Barmbek section of northeast Hamburg, where the suspect stabbed a 50-year-old German man to death with a large knife, police said. The attacker injured five others, at least some of them as he fled, and a 35-year-old Turkish bystander suffered injuries as he subdued the attacker before authorities arrived.
The attacker yelled “Allahu akbar”—Arabic for “God is great”—according to one witness interviewed by Germany’s N-TV television and another whose interview with reporters on the scene circulated in a video on social media.
A Hamburg police spokeswoman said she couldn’t confirm the “Allahu akbar” exclamation or that the attack was ideologically motivated. “We are investigating in all directions,” she said.
But the revelation that a rejected asylum applicant appeared to have carried out the attack had the potential to revive Germany’s immigration debate—an issue that has largely faded into the background even as the Sept. 24 national election approaches. Ever since the influx of hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants to Germany two years ago, Chancellor Angela Merkel has pushed to tighten asylum laws, speed deportations and negotiated with Turkey and north African countries to reduce the number of migrants who reach Europe’s shores.
While several hundred asylum applicants are still crossing into Germany daily, officials say, those numbers are a far cry from the thousands a day seen in 2015. Germany hasn’t had a terrorist attack since last December, when an Islamic State supporter drove a truck into a Christmas market in Berlin, leaving 12 dead. CONTINUE AT SITE
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