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CRIME

Woman dies after stabbing on German university campus

A 30-year-old woman has died from her injuries after an apparently random knife attack on students at a German university campus.

Woman dies after stabbing on German university campus
German police officers on patrol. Photo: Tobias Schwarz/AFP

A 30-year-old woman has died from her injuries after an apparently random knife attack on students at a German university campus, police and prosecutors said on Sunday.

The woman was an assistant professor who had been attending a conference at the Hamm-Lippstadt University of Applied Sciences when the incident happened on Friday.

Two other women and one man were injured before other students managed to restrain the attacker. A 34-year-old suspect was on Saturday transferred to psychiatric care after prosecutors said he was likely suffering from paranoid schizophrenia.

The university said on Sunday it had learned of the death “with great sadness” in a statement posted on its website. “The act itself had already horrified us, but the fact that it has now torn such a valued colleague from our midst is inconceivable,” the statement said.

A memorial event is being prepared for Monday. The alleged attacker, a student at the university, had randomly targeted the victims with two kitchen knives, according to prosecutors.

A 22-year-old student suffered eight stab wounds to the stomach and needed emergency surgery, but her condition is not thought to be life threatening.

The other two victims, a 22-year-old man and another young woman of the same age, were less seriously injured.

The suspect had earlier on Friday discharged himself from a psychiatric hospital where he had been staying after a suicide attempt, prosecutors said.

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ANTI-SEMITISM

Germany sees sharp rise in anti-Semitic acts

Anti-Semitic acts rose sharply in Germany last year, especially after war broke out between Israel and Hamas in Gaza in October, according to new figures released on Tuesday.

Germany sees sharp rise in anti-Semitic acts

The Federal Association of Research and Information Centres on Anti-Semitism (RIAS) documented 4,782 anti-Semitic “incidents” in 2023 – an increase of more than 80 per cent on the previous year.

More than half of the incidents – which included threats, physical attacks and vandalism – were registered after Palestinian militant group Hamas’s unprecedented October 7th attack on Israel, RIAS said.

Germany’s domestic intelligence agency last week also published figures showing a new record in anti-Semitic crimes in 2023.

A total of 5,164 crimes were recorded during the year, the agency said, compared with 2,641 in 2022.

Anti-Semitic crimes with a “religious-ideological motivation” jumped to 492 from just 33 the previous year, with the vast majority committed after October 7.

Felix Klein, the government’s commissioner for the fight against anti-Semitism, said the RIAS figures were “absolutely catastrophic”.

The Hamas attack had acted as an “accelerant” for anti-Semitism in Germany, he told a press conference in Berlin.

“Jewish life in Germany is under greater threat than it has ever been since the Federal Republic of Germany was founded,” he said.

The Hamas attack resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 37,600 people, also mostly civilians, Gaza’s health ministry said.

Islamophobic incidents also increased dramatically in Germany last year, according to a separate report published on Monday.

The CLAIM alliance against Islamophobia said it had registered 1,926 attacks on Muslims in 2023, compared with just under 900 in 2023.

These included verbal abuse, discrimination, physical violence and damage to property.

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