Right-wing AfD politician is stabbed in Mannheim days after police officer was killed in knife attack at anti-Islam rally in the city

A member of a German right-wing party was stabbed and injured in Mannheim, just days after a knife attack killed a police officer and left five other people injured in the same city during an anti-Islam rally.

Heinrich Koch, municipal candidate for the right-wing Alternative für Germany (AfD) had confronted someone who tried to tear down an election poster near the city’s market square on Tuesday evening, resulting in him being attacked with a knife.

Koch, 62, was taken away to the hospital, where he is treated for non-life-threatening injuries.

A suspect was arrested on Tuesday evening, but a manhunt is underway for two more suspects, local police confirmed.

AfD state chairman Marjus Frohnmainer said: “We are shocked and appalled.”

The attack comes after a 29-year-old police officer was killed last week following a knife attack in the southwestern city of Mannheim, which also injured five people.

The stabbing death of right-wing German politician Heinrich Koch comes days after a stabbing in Mannheim that left one dead and five injured. The man who injured five and killed one last week has been identified as Sulaiman Ataee (pictured), 25, who emigrated to Germany from Afghanistan in 2014 when he was just 15

Chaos broke out at the anti-Islam rally on Friday when a man wearing a dark hooded jacket and a tracksuit started violently brandishing a large knife.

Flowers and candles are left in Mannheim city center in tribute to the victims of the attack

German police officers pay respects to their colleague who died after a stabbing

The officer, identified by German media as Rouven L. and kept alive by a heart-lung machine, was reportedly “stabbed several times in the area of ​​the head” after a 25-year-old Afghan man was stabbed several times members of a group that describes itself on Friday as an opponent of ‘political Islam’.

Tuesday’s attack is the latest in a series of attacks on politicians in the country, raising concerns about rising political violence in Germany.

Last month, Franziska Giffey, Berlin’s top economic official, former mayor and ex-minister, was attacked during an event at a local library by a man who approached her from behind and hit her with a bag containing a hard device. said.

A week earlier, a candidate from Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s party was beaten in the eastern city of Dresden while campaigning for this week’s European Parliament elections and had to undergo surgery.

Both ruling and opposition parties say their members and supporters have faced a wave of physical and verbal attacks in recent months, and have called on police to step up protection of politicians and election rallies.

In February, the German parliament said in a report that there were a total of 2,790 attacks on elected representatives in 2023. Representatives of the Greens were disproportionately affected in 1,219 cases, those of the AfD in 478 cases and representatives of the SPD in 420 cases.