by Our Foreign Desk

A MAYORAL candidate in the German city of Cologne was stabbed in the neck by a xenophobic attacker on Saturday.

Henriette Reker was attacked at a campaign stand set up by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats at a city market. Her condition was reported as serious but stable.

Another woman was seriously wounded and three people sustained minor injuries in the attack.

Backed by Ms Merkel’s conservatives and two other parties, Ms Reker was campaigning as an independent candidate for mayor in Germany’s fourth-biggest city, and was considered one of the leading contenders in yesterday’s poll.

She currently heads Cologne’s social affairs and integration department and is responsible for refugee housing.

The suspect, a German national and Cologne resident who had been unemployed for several years, said that he had targeted Ms Reker for “anti-foreigner motives,” Mr Wagner said.

He added that the man appeared to have acted alone and had no police record.

Prosecutor Ulf Willuhn said authorities would now investigate whether that was the man’s primary motive or whether his mental state played a role, adding that they planned to carry out a psychiatric examination.

City officials said the election would go ahead as planned.

Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere described the stabbing as “an attack on our democracy” and said he had long been “concerned by the hate-filled language and violent actions that accompany the refugee debate in Germany.”

Ms Merkel arrived in Istanbul yesterday for talks with Turkish ministers over the EU’s offer of money and concessions in return for containing the refugee crisis in Turkey.