Berlin Senator Struck on Head as Concern Grows Over Attacks on Politicians

By Reuters

May 8, 2024

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REUTERS

FILE PHOTO: Governing Mayor of Berlin, Franziska Giffey, delivers a speech during the ceremony of granting honorary citizenship of Berlin to pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim, at the ‘Rotes Rathaus’ town hall in Berlin, Germany, April 21, 2023. REUTERS/Annegret Hilse/File Photo

BERLIN (Reuters) – Berlin senator and former city mayor Franziska Giffey became the latest victim in a string of attacks on German politicians when a man struck her from behind with a heavy object in a local library, according to a police statement on Wednesday.

Giffey, local minister for the economy and a member of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD), was slightly injured in the attack, police and the local prosecutor’s office said.

A man hit her on the head and neck with a bag containing something hard before running off, the statement said, adding that Giffey went to hospital for a short time to treat the pain.

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The attack follows calls for greater police protection of politicians in Germany after a number of high-profile verbal and physical attacks against them.

Four teenagers are under investigation after a German member of the European Parliament was beaten and hospitalised while putting up SPD election posters in the eastern city of Dresden.

Prominent members of the Greens, who are in coalition with Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s SPD at federal level, have also faced angry protests this year, when Germany holds a string of state elections against a backdrop of rising support for the far right