On 24 August, during the celebration of the 650th anniversary of the German city of Solingen, a man stabbed several people with a knife in front of a stage.

A 56-year-old woman and two men aged 56 and 67 were killed. Eight people were injured, four of them seriously; they are now out of danger.

The Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe, issued an arrest warrant on Sunday against a 26-year-old Syrian man, who is allegedly a member of the Islamist terrorist organisation Islamic State (IS), which claimed responsibility for the knife attack.

The IS stated that the aim of attacking the “Christian gathering” was “revenge for Muslims in Palestine and elsewhere”.

The perpetrator was arrested on Saturday evening. According to media reports, he came to Germany as an asylum seeker, and had been living in a refugee accommodation in Solingen.

Right after the attack, federal president Frank Walter Steinmeier urged all citizens to “stand together against hatred and violence”.

Protestant and Catholic bishops react

“Nothing can justify this unrestrained violence”, stressed Kirsten Fehrs, president of the the mainline Protestant Evangelical Church of Germany (EKD), and Georg Bätzing, president of the Catholic German Bishops' Conference, in a joint statement issued on Saturday.

“The inhumane attack in Solingen leaves us speechless and deeply shocked. As churches, we mourn with the families of the victims and pray for the injured and the deceased”, they added.

“Our trust had been shaken”

Around 700 people attended the service for the victims in the church right next to the site of the attack days later. The memorial was organised by the Association of Christian Churches, and led by the Protestant pastor Friederike Höroldt and the Catholic city dean, Michael Mohr.

Höroldt pointed out that “our trust had been shaken by the bloody deed”, and encouraged the people of Solingen to look for comfort, help and support.

The superintendent of the Solingen church district, Ilka Werner, said in her sermon that “in the face of this atrocious act, which was committed just a few metres away from the town church, we must ask ourselves how it could have happened”.

The Protestant theologian also warned against “rumours, slander and finger-pointing in the search for those responsible”, because “such simple answers are not enough to understand the disaster and cope with the grief”.

Among those attending were also the mayor of Solingen, Tim Kurzbach, and the president of the Protestant Church in the Rhineland, Thorsten Latzel.

Chancellor pledges to speed up deportations

The already heated debate about migration in the country has intensified in the aftermath of the attack, with politicians from all parties calling for a tougher course in asylum policy and a limit on migration to Germany.

During his visit to Solingen on 26 August, federal chancellor Olaf Scholz told the media that his government “will have to do everything we can to ensure that those who cannot and are not allowed to stay in Germany are repatriated and deported”.

“This is terrorism, terrorism against us all and against our way of life. We cannot get used to it and we will never tolerate it”, underlined Scholz.

“We will not allow our community spirit to be destroyed by evil criminals who pursue the worst ideologies, and we will act against them with the utmost rigour and severity”, stressed the chancellor.