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After an attacker driving an SUV. killing five people, calls for solidarity temporarily giving way to complaints from rival lawmakers as early elections scheduled for February approached.
By Melissa Eddy
Reporting from Berlin
Days after an attacker drove a pickup truck. After killing five more people at a Christmas market in eastern Germany, calls for solidarity gave way to political shootouts, as doubts arose Monday about the authorities’ inability to save the deaths.
The police arrest a Saudi refugee, a 50-year-old doctor, whom they consider guilty of the attack. He had lived in Germany for almost two decades.
Still, the killings in the eastern city of Magdeburg have brought immigration and security considerations back to the forefront, and political leaders took positions Monday on those burning issues ahead of snap elections scheduled for February.
Despite calls not to use the attack for political gain, complaints from the German government (added by Elon Musk) have come from all sides. The fallout will most likely fuel what is already shaping up to be a brief but intense crusade after the government has collapsed following Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s loss in a vote of confidence in parliament last week.
The far-right Alternative for Germany party held a rally in Magdeburg on Monday. Hundreds of people attended the event in the city center, chanting “If you don’t like Germany, leave it” and “Expel it!”»
Before the demonstration, the party’s candidate for chancellorship, Alice Weidel, made it clear that the occasion would also be used for political purposes.
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