German Chancellor Angela Merkel doubled down on her embrace of refugees following a week of terror in Germany, saying the country’s de facto open border policies would stand and she would not give in to “hatred and fear.”
“I am today convinced, as I was back then, that we can do it,” Merkel said at a press conference in Berlin, which she called to address the four deadly attacks that rocked the country. Migrants from Syria and Afghanistan carried out three of the July attacks that left ten people dead and more than 40 wounded, and a fourth was carried out by a first-generation German whose parents are from Iran.
Merkel called the attacks “shocking, aggrieving, and also depressing,” but said Germany will continue to welcome with open arms the flood of refugees from the Middle East and North Africa pouring into Europe. Germany alone received more than a million migrants this year.
“The terrorists want to make us lose sight of what is important to us, break down our cohesion and sense of community as well as inhibiting our way of life, our openness and our willingness to take in people who are in need,” Merkel said. “They see hatred and fear between religions.”
“We stand decisively against that.”
The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for two of the attacks — one in which a teenager from Afghanistan started hacking passengers on a train with an axe and a knife, and one where a Syrian refugee detonated a suicide bomb at a wine bar outside an open air music festival.
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