German mayoral candidate wounded in knife attack

A German mayoral candidate has been stabbed in the neck one day before she was due to compete in an election.

Local police said Ms Reker, 58, was “stable, but not out of the woods”.

There was no initial indication of the motive for the attack, and it was not immediately clear how serious the injuries were.

Reker is running as an independent candidate in Sunday’s election but has the backing of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats and two other parties.

Other witnesses said the man made no attempt to flee the scene and stayed until police arrived and he was arrested.

The suspect appeared to have acted alone and had no police record, Mr Wagner added.

Prosecutor Ulf Willuhn said officials will now investigate whether that was in fact the man’s primary motive or whether his health played a role.

Justice Minister Heiko Maas condemned the attack as “an unimaginable and abominable act” while regional president Annelore Kraft said it was an “assault on democracy”.

City officials said the election would go ahead as planned.

The attack comes as Germany struggles to cope with a huge influx of asylum seekers, whose numbers are expected to reach between 800,000 and a million by the year’s end.

A few months earlier, a mentally disturbed woman stabbed Oskar Lafontaine, then a prominent member of Germany’s main opposition party, while he was campaigning in Cologne.