The policeman suffered serious head injuries in a knife attack on Friday

On Sunday 2 June, the German authorities announced the death of the policeman who was stabbed in the head in a knife attack in Mannheim on Friday. The 29-year-old policeman was seriously injured when he tried to intervene. Despite repeated emergency operations and being placed in an induced coma, he did not survive, said the public prosecutor’s office and the police of this city in south-west Germany in a joint statement

The attack, which took place in the city centre during an anti-Islamic rally, was described as an ‘attack’ by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. In addition to the police officer who died, five other people were injured. The assailant, a 25-year-old man born in Afghanistan and resident in Germany since 2014, was shot during the police intervention and has not yet been questioned.

According to the investigators, it is still too early to say with certainty what motivated the attacker. However, on Friday, the Minister for the Interior, Nancy Faeser, raised the possibility of an Islamist motive. For his part, Finance Minister Christian Lindner, one of the heavyweights of the coalition government, spoke on Sunday of ‘Islamist terrorism’.