Christmas Market Tragedy Hands Merkel Critics Line of Attack
- German leader faces election-year challenge from populist AfD
- Chancellor has toughened stances on migration amid pressure
Merkel: We Have to Assume This Was a Terror Attack
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Chancellor Angela Merkel got an early taste of the kind of reception she can expect from her populist opponents after a truck careened into a Berlin Christmas market, killing 12 people in what her government said was probably a terror attack.
“These are Merkel’s dead,” Marcus Pretzell, chairman of the Alternative for Germany party in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia, posted on Twitter, eliciting a chorus of rebuttals. A vice chairman of the Social Democrats, Ralf Stegner, called the comment “unbelievable and disgusting.”