A newly elected mayor in western Germany has been critically injured in a stabbing attack, according to German media reports.
Iris Stalzer, the 57-year-old mayor-elect of the North Rhine-Westphalia town of Herdecke, was stabbed in front of her home about noon (10:00 GMT) on Tuesday, leaving her with life-threatening injuries, Germany’s WDR broadcaster reported, quoting local police.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz condemned the “heinous attack” and called for a swift investigation.
“We fear for the life of the designated mayor, Iris Stalzer, and hope for her full recovery,” he wrote in a post on X.
According to WDR, Stalzer was repeatedly stabbed before managing to haul herself inside her home, where her children called rescue services.
After finding Stalzer severely injured, rescue workers sent her to a hospital on a helicopter, according to Germany’s Deutsche Welle broadcaster.
Stalzer’s teenage son told authorities his mother had been attacked by several men, Germany’s Bild newspaper reported.
Further details about the attack or potential motives were not immediately clear.
Stalzer, a member of the centre-left Social Democratic Party, was elected mayor of the town of 22,000 people in the eastern Ruhr area on September 28.
The attack came after a regionwide campaign that politicians in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s largest state, described as unusually hostile.
A recent study found 60 percent of politicians in Germany had experienced violence at least once, with one in five saying it had made them more reluctant to appear in public.
In 2019, a conservative district government president in the state of Hesse, Walter Luebcke, a supporter of then-Chancellor Angela Merkel’s refugee policy, was shot dead by a far-right activist on his home terrace.
Four years before that, Henriette Reker was stabbed by a man with anti-immigration views the day before being elected mayor of Cologne. She made a full recovery and is due to leave office later this year.