The German chancellor,
Angela Merkel, has expressed shock over the stabbing of a political ally, in an attack police said was linked to the migrant crisis.
Henriette Reker, an independent close to Merkel’s ruling Christian Democrats (CDU), suffered serious wounds to the neck in the attack in the western city of Cologne, which is to elect its mayor on Sunday, on Saturday morning.
Police arrested the attacker at the scene, with regional police chief Wolfgang Albers describing it as a political act linked to the fact that Reker was “responsible for taking charge of refugees” in the city, the fourth largest in
Germany.
The attacker, a 44-year-old unemployed man, “said he had a racist motivation for committing this act”, Cologne police official Norbert Wagner told a news conference.