Angela Merkel could be forced to RESIGN as her migrant policy is blamed for Berlin massacre… as critics say ‘she is finished’ and predict far-right surge
PRESSURE is mounting on Angela Merkel to resign after her open-door migrant policy was blamed for the Berlin truck massacre and a spate of terror attacks.
The German Chancellor is facing a coup from within her own party amid the fierce backlash, with her critics saying her time in power is “finished”.
Experts have also predicted how the deadly Christmas market attack will boost support for populist groups and the far-right opposition ahead of the looming German elections.
Police are hunting a 23-year-old Tunisian refugee, named as Anis Amri, over Monday's slaughter which claimed the lives of 12 people and injured 48 others.
Hundreds have taken to social media to demand Merkel's resignation in the wake of the attack and slam her "failure to confront the mistakes of her migration policy".
The General Secretary for Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union Party (CDU) today said it was time to put the entire migrant policy “to the test”.
“Now citizens expect us to act. The point is that we have to put everything to the test, readjust and improve,” Andreas Scheuer said.
“We now need, and the state people expect a strong state power.”
It came after other ministers in her party rounded on Merkel over the terror attack and pushed for more heavily-armed police.
In a radio interview, Klaus Bouillon of Merkel’s CDU party said that Germany was in a “state of war”.
“We must state that we are in a state of war, although some people who want to see only the good can not see,” he told Saarland radio.
He said police should be able to take action “wherever we think it is necessary”.
“That means long-range weapons, short weapons, machine guns, even if this sounds martial,” he said.
CSU chief Horst Seehofer also called for an overhaul of the refugee and security policy in Germany.
"We owe it to the victims, to the people concerned and to the whole population, that we are rethinking and revising our entire immigration and security policy."
The opposition party, Alternative for Germany (AfD), also leapt at the chance to slam Merkel.
Chairwoman Frauke Petry said members of Merkel’s own party were already talking about the end of her time as Chancellor.
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"Merkel is finished and the younger ones like deputy finance minister Jens Spahn even say that her period is about to end,” she told .
“The problem is that everyone in the CDU knows this, but they also know they don't have an alternative.”
Marcus Pretzell, chairman of the AfD party in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia, posted on Twitter: “These are Merkel’s dead."
The German leader was also slammed on social media, with hundreds calling for her resignation.
One Twitter user wrote: “Merkel’s ‘all welcome’ of 2015 has fuelled terrorism across Europe in the last 12 months – do the honourable thing and resign Merkel.”
Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders also made a provocative dig by tweeting a photo of Merkel with blood on her hands hours after the Berlin attack.
He has previously hit out at “cowardly” EU leaders over a “tsunami” of jihadist attacks across the continent.
Merkel - who attended an award ceremony to celebrate the International Day of Migrants the day of the attack - said she was "shocked and shaken" by the tragedy.
The German leader's open-door approach to immigration, criticised by political allies and foes, may seal Merkel's fate if the attacker turns out to be a migrant let in to the country.
A series of violent attacks and sexual offences involving migrants has hardened the German public's attitude.
On New Year's Eve 2015 hundreds of sexual assaults, including at least 24 rapes, and numerous thefts were reported in Germany, mainly in Cologne city centre.
Similar incidents were reported in Hamburg, Frankfurt, Dortmund, Düsseldorf, Stuttgart, and Bielefeld.
On July 18 a 17-year-old Afghan refugee wielding an axe and a knife attacks passengers on a train in southern Germany, severely wounding four, before being shot dead by police. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack.
Four days later an 18-year-old German-Iranian gunman apparently acting alone killed nine people in Munich.
The teenager had no Islamist ties but was obsessed with mass killings.
The attack was carried out on the fifth anniversary of twin attacks by Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik that killed 77 people.
On July 24, a 21-year-old Syrian refugee was arrested after killing a pregnant woman and wounding two people with a machete in the southwestern German city of Reutlingen, near Stuttgart.
That same day a Syrian man wounded 15 people when he blows himself up outside a music festival in Ansbach in southern Germany. Islamic State claims responsibility for the attack.
The 27-year-old arrived in Germany two years ago and claimed asylum. He had been in trouble with the police repeatedly for drug-taking and other offences and had faced deportation to Bulgaria.
The presence of almost a million recent migrants alone has served to trigger the biggest rise in right-wing support since the 1930s.
Monday night's terror attack could spell doom for Merkel's bid for a fourth term in office next year.
Daniel Hamilton, executive director of the Center for Transatlantic Relations at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, said the attack will heap pressure on Merkel.
Speaking with , he said: “Germany hasn’t had an attack like this that’s killed a lot of people in a long time, so clearly there will be pressure on her.
“But there will also be a sense that Europeans are in this together, that it’s a common threat.”
The attack in Berlin comes five months after Tunisian extremist Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel ploughed a truck into a crowd on the Nice seafront, killing 86 people.
Germany must assume a truck plowing through a crowded Christmas market in Berlin was a "terrorist attack," Chancellor Merkel said Tuesday, while authorities expressed uncertainty over whether they had arrested the correct suspect.
Twelve people were killed and nearly 50 others injured when the truck drove into the popular Christmas market filled with tourists and locals outside the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church near Berlin's Zoo station late Monday.
Police detained an asylum-seeker from Pakistan shortly afterward, but he denied involvement, Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said.
The man had entered Germany on December 31 last year and arrived in Berlin in February.
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