A member of a German far-right party was stabbed and wounded in the southwestern city of Mannheim, German news agency BLID reported Wednesday, only days after a knife attack killed one police officer and left five other people injured in the same city.

The stabbing happened late Tuesday, reportedly near the same market square where the earlier attack took place on Friday.

Another stabbing has happened in the Germany in the same city as the picture below, this time it was an AfD politician.

Ausländer raus pic.twitter.com/Y3XxRmutBN

— Niall O'Hara (@ThoughtsToby) June 5, 2024

A candidate with the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, reportedly caught somebody trying to tear down an election poster. When he confronted that person, he was attacked with a knife. The AfD politician, who was campaigning for local elections on Sunday, is still in a hospital with non-life-threatening cuts.

The AfD labeled the attack as an act of left-wing extremism. Markus Frohnmaier, the AfD state chairman, expressed shock and dismay over the incident.

On Friday, a 25-year-old Afghan man stabbed several members of a group that describes itself as opposing "political Islam." The group, Pax Europa, describes itself as an organization that informs the public about the dangers posed by the "increasing spread and influence of political Islam."

Michael Stürzenberger, an anti-Islamist activist who is one of the group's leading figures and has spoken at its events, was among those wounded. Another four members of the Pax Europa group were injured along with a police officer who tried to stop the attack. The 29-year-old officer died of his injuries on Sunday. The attacker is still in the hospital.

Germany said Tuesday it was considering allowing deportations to Afghanistan after an asylum seeker from the country killed a police officer and wounded five others in a knife attack. Deportations to Afghanistan have been stopped since the Taliban retook power in 2021.

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Thursday's decision by the BfV intelligence agency to increase monitoring of "Der Fluegel" – The Wing – deals a blow to Germany's biggest opposition party, undermining its efforts to fend off accusations that it harbors racist views.

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The AfD has ridden a wave of anger at Chancellor Angela Merkel's 2015 decision to welcome almost 1 million asylum seekers, and the BfV decision follows fatal attacks on Jews, Muslims and a liberal politician in Germany.

"Today I inform you that The Wing has been upgraded to an extremist entity," BfV chief Thomas Haldenwang told a news conference, calling its leaders "right-wing extremists."

The Wing, which is headed by Bjoern Hoecke, the AfD's leader in the eastern state of Thuringia, had already criticized the decision to conduct a 14-month review of its activities. Another of its leaders, Andreas Kalbitz, dismissed the BfV's conclusions on Thursday as politically motivated.

"This is no surprise because the political decision was made long ago even though it is groundless and motivated purely by political considerations," Kalbitz said. "We will exhaust all judicial means available to fix this mistake."

Hoecke has condemned an attack at shisha bars in western Germany last month by a racist gunman who shot and killed nine people before killing his mother and himself. He also condemned attacks in October by an anti-Semitic gunmen in the city of Halle against a synagogue and a kebab restaurant that killed two.

Hoecke issued a statement with other AfD officials on Wednesday clarifying earlier comments about foreigners and the Holocaust that had caused controversy, apparently in anticipation of the BfV findings.

The deadly attacks shattered Germans' sense of security, renewed fears of far-right violence and prompted mainstream parties to accuse AfD politicians of contributing to an atmosphere of hatred that encourages violence.

An investigation against the AfD as a whole is still under way. Haldenwang said the BfV estimates 20% of the AfD's 35,000 members belong to The Wing.

The designation of The Wing as extremist enables the BfV to deploy additional espionage methods to monitor its activities.

Haldenwang said the agency estimates that some 20% of AfD's 35,000 members belong to The Wing.

Joachim Seeger, which heads the BfV division for far-right extremism, denounced what he said was a racial purity agenda among some of The Wing's leaders that excludes non-Europeans, especially Muslims.

The Jewish community welcomed the BfV's decision.

"State organs must at the same time investigate how big The Wing's influence is within the AfD," said Charlotte Knobloch, a member of the Jewish community in Munich. "The whole party should be monitored given that it enters elections as one and poses a threat to democracy."

The decision could renew a debate in the AfD about Hoecke's growing influence in the party.

"Hoecke must ensure that The Wing draws a clear line between itself and extremists," said AfD Berlin lawmakers Georg Pazderski.

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A 27-year-old German man previously unknown to police confessed to carrying out the attack in the eastern city of Halle in which two people were killed Wednesday.

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The suspected gunman, identified as Stephan Balliet, allegedly built the firearms he used with the help of online instructions, posted an anti-Semitic screed before the attack and later broadcast the shooting live on a popular gaming site.

In response to the attack and previous incidents, German officials have called for more officers to be devoted to tackling far-right extremism and a greater focus on online platforms they say are increasingly being used as a means of spreading far-right radicalism and linking up with like-minded people in a way already seen with Islamist extremism.

Thomas Haldenwang, who heads the BfV domestic intelligence agency, said the attack in Halle and similar shootings in Texas, New Zealand, and Norway showed the need for security services to get better tools to tackle online extremism. In particular, he called for authorities to be given permission to install monitoring software on suspect's devices so as to read their encrypted communication.

Holger Münch, head of the Federal Criminal Police Office, said online threats and acts of violence are creating a "climate of fear" in Germany that is deterring people from volunteering for public office.

"Right-wing crimes threaten our democracy," Münch said. "The situation is serious."

The country is still reeling from the killing of Walter Lübcke, a regional politician from Chancellor Angela Merkel's party, who was shot dead at his home in June. Lübcke had vocally supported Merkel's welcoming stance toward refugees in 2015 and the suspect in his killing is a far-right extremist with a string of convictions for violent anti-migrant crimes.

Münch said his agency has identified 43 far-right extremists who are considered to constitute a serious threat, an increase of about a third since the start of the year. Overall, authorities say there are some 12,700 far-right extremists in Germany "prepared to use violence."

He called for a bundle of measures including greater scrutiny of online hate postings, extending the period of time that security services can store data on possible extremists and for those who create and distribute lists of political enemies to be prosecuted.

He also proposed that an existing law requiring platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to swiftly remove illegal hate speech should be expanded to force them to report such content to police.

Münch suggested his office could become a central point of contact dealing with online hate crimes in the same way it already does for child pornography.

Further proposals include creating a special unit to investigate possible extremists in the police and other government departments and a crackdown on known far-right groups.

Security officials are particularly concerned that the 'new Right' – groups that include factions within the Alternative for Germany party which entered the federal parliament two years ago – are providing the intellectual fodder for extremists.

Authorities are still investigating whether the suspect in the Halle shooting had ties to any known groups or individuals. At least five people watched the attack live as it happened, suggesting they may have known it was going to take place.

The suspect failed to force his way into the synagogue as scores of people inside were observing Judaism's holiest day, Yom Kippur. He then shot and killed a 40-year-old German woman in the street outside and a 20-year-old man at a nearby kebab shop before fleeing. He was later arrested in Zeitz, about 50 kilometers (30 miles) south of Halle.

The suspect has admitted during questioning that he carried out the shooting and had anti-Semitic and right-wing extremist motives.

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The news heightened fears of more anti-Semitic violence in a nation still scarred by the Holocaust and witnessing the rise of the right-wing Alternative for Germany party.

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"It's very scary," said Samuel Tsarfati, a 27-year-old stage director, as he left a Berlin synagogue with fellow French national Samuel Laufer.

The pair, who live and work in the German capital, had spent the holiest day in the Jewish calendar secluded in prayer and switched off their mobile phones for the fast day.

Other members of Germany's 200,000-strong Jewish community expressed similar alarm over the attack. After trying to blast into the Halle synagogue, a lone suspect killed a woman outside and a man in a nearby kebab shop.

"It's not a coincidence it happened in east Germany. The far-right AfD is very strong there," Tsarfati said. Leaders of the AfD, which made big gains in elections in two eastern states last month, condemned Wednesday's attack in Halle.

Attacks on Jews rose by 20% last year and were mainly carried out by right-wing extremists. Even before the Halle shooting, a heavy police presence guarded the synagogue in the trendy suburb of Prenzlauer Berg where Tsarfati and Laufer attended prayers.

Jews and German politicians have been particularly worried by comments by Björn Höcke, the AfD leader of eastern Thuringia state, that the Holocaust memorial in Berlin is a "monument of shame" and that schools should highlight German suffering in World War II.

"What happened today shows that the AfD should not be underestimated," said Laufer. "AfD leaders like Höcke don't want to see that their words encourage some people to kill."

Höcke was among the AfD leaders to condemn the Halle attack.

The Halle gunman broadcast anti-Semitic comments before he opened fire. Several German media outlets said he acted alone although police have not confirmed this.

The far-right AfD entered the national parliament for the first time two years ago, riding a wave of anger at Chancellor Angela Merkel's 2015 decision to welcome almost one million migrants.

'Blinded by hatred'

Charlotte Knobloch, a Holocaust survivor and president of the Jewish Community in Munich, suggested that the AfD's anti-immigrant rhetoric was contributing to an atmosphere of hate that encouraged political violence.

"This scary attack makes it clear how fast words can become acts of political extremism," she said in a statement. "I'd be interested to know what that AfD has to say about such excesses, for which it had prepared the ground with its uncultured hate and incitement."

At the gold-domed New Synagogue in Berlin's city center about 200 people, including Muslim leaders, held a vigil, some carrying Israeli flags and others holding candles. Merkel visited the synagogue in the evening and took part in prayers.

Renate Keller, a 76-year-old attending the vigil with her husband, said the attack in Halle showed that Germany was not doing enough to fight anti-Semitism.

"It scares me that after the Holocaust some people have learned nothing from our history, which still weighs on us today," she said. "People like the attacker have probably never met a Jew in their lives. They are just blinded by hatred."

Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, warned of the incendiary potential far-right politics.

"It shows that right-wing extremism is not only some kind of political development, but that it is highly dangerous and exactly the kind of danger that we have always warned against."

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Voters in Saxony, a region of around 4.1 million people bordering Poland and the Czech Republic, and neighboring Brandenburg, which has 2.5 million inhabitants and surrounds Berlin, are electing new state legislatures.

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The formerly communist east has become a stronghold for the six-year-old Alternative for Germany (AfD), which is hoping for a possible first-place finish in at least one state. Saxony has been governed since German reunification in 1990 by Merkel's Christian Democratic Union and Brandenburg by the center-left Social Democrats, its junior partners in the national government.

Both are expected to lose ground, while the opposition Greens, which have traditionally struggled in the east, but have surged in national polls over recent months, are also looking to improve their score significantly.

That could be awkward for the national government's future. The Social Democrats, mired in a long-running national poll slump, are currently in a long-drawn-out process of choosing new leadership.

A very weak performance Sunday and in a third eastern state election, Thuringia, on Oct. 27, could strengthen the hand of members who want to walk out of the fractious national coalition.

More immediately, forming new state governments in Saxony and Brandenburg could be tricky, since mainstream parties have vowed not to form coalitions with AfD. Polls put the party's support in Saxony at more than double its 9.7% score in 2014, and its support in Brandenburg well above the 12.2% that it won then.

"AfD must not be given responsibility for this state," Saxony's center-right governor, Michael Kretschmer, told ZDF television on Friday.

"This is a party that is sliding further and further into right-wing extremism."

Saxony is currently governed by a coalition of Merkel's CDU and the Social Democrats. In Brandenburg, the Social Democrats lead a coalition with the Left Party, which is further to their Left.

Polls suggest that both coalitions will lose their majority, forcing them to bring in a third partner such as the Greens or consider alternatives such as a minority government, which is a rarity in Germany.

Saxony has long been a hotbed of far-right groups. It is not only a stronghold of AfD but also the state where the anti-migration group PEGIDA – Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the West – rose to prominence with weekly protests in Dresden that brought tens of thousands of supporters into the streets at the height of the 2015 migration crisis.

Following the killing of a German man by a Syrian asylum-seeker a year ago, the Saxon city of Chemnitz saw days of anti-foreigner riots by thousands of neo-Nazis and members of AfD.

AfD has tapped into disillusionment, particularly in rural areas, among people who feel left behind after nearly three decades of German unity. Promises of equal living standards did not always become reality, salaries in the east still lag behind those in the west and many young people have left to seek opportunities elsewhere.

In both states voting Sunday, the party has put up posters urging voters to "complete" the 1989 rebellion against communist rule and proclaiming that "the east is rising up."

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Hezbollah's military wing was outlawed by Germany in 2013.

The resolution, stating that Hezbollah represents a "danger to [Germany's] constitutional order," was presented to a Bundestag vote by the far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD) but was rejected by the Christian Social Union, the Social Democratic Party, the Left, the Greens, Free Democrats, and Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union.

The Shiite organization has been designated as a terrorist group by several western countries, including the U.S., the U.K., Canada and Israel, as well as by Arab League member Bahrain. Some countries, such as Australia, France and Germany, only classify Hezbollah's military wing as a terrorist organization.

Those who opposed the bill argued that it would be "more appropriate" to deal with the classification of Hezbollah through the European Union's institutions.

"If we really want to outlaw the group, then a decision in that regard should be taken at the European level," said CDU's MP Roderich Kiesewetter.

The AfD slammed the vote's results.

"Hezbollah must be banned in Germany," said AfD deputy Beatrix von Storch, who helped draft the bill. She called the group a "terrorist organization" whose goal is the "destruction of Israel."

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