Image source, Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP
- author, Paul Kirby
- role, BBC News
A local candidate has been reportedly attacked in the German city of Mannheim, five days after a police officer was stabbed to death in the market square.
The man, described as a local election candidate for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, was injured in the attack, according to German news agency DPA.
His party said the incident happened on Tuesday night near Market Square.
The local AfD association said its candidate was stabbed with a knife when he confronted a man who was tearing down election posters, adding that the man had been taken to hospital for treatment.
Malte Kaufmann, an AfD politician and member of the German parliament, identified the victim of the attack as Heinrich Koch, a candidate in city council elections due to be held on June 9, but this has not been confirmed by the authorities.
Mannheim police spoke only about police investigative work, adding that they would release details of the raid later on Wednesday, but dpa reported that a suspect had been arrested.
The latest incident in Mannheim came after an Afghan asylum seeker was detained on suspicion of stabbing to death a 29-year-old police officer and wounding five anti-Islamic extremist activists as they prepared for a rally on Friday.
The killing sparked outrage in Germany, with the government announcing it may allow deportations to Afghanistan.
The suspect in the attack, a 25-year-old man, is said to have come to Germany as a refugee in 2013 and since had two children. Deportations to Afghanistan were halted when the Taliban returned to power three years ago.
The riots took place as Germans prepared to vote in the 27-nation EU European Parliament elections.
The AfD is vying for second place in the polls to Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s centre-left Social Democrats, but the far-right party’s leading candidate has been hit by a series of scandals.
“We are shocked and stunned,” Markus Frohnmayer, an AfD leader in the southwestern state of Baden-Württemberg, told German media in response to the attack.
