Berlin-- Germany's opposition leader vowed on Thursday to ban people without proper documents from entering the country and step up deportations if he is elected chancellor next month, as a knife attack on a rejected asylum seeker spread By the time he was on the campaign trail as a front-runner.

Two people were killed and three injured, including a 2-year-old boy, in the Bavarian city of Aschaffenburg on Wednesday. The suspect arrested shortly after was a 28-year-old Afghan with a history of mental problems and violence who said more than a month ago that he would leave Germany voluntarily.

Bavarian officials said his asylum application was rejected in 2023 and authorities failed to return him to Bulgaria, where he originally arrived in the EU, and pointed the finger at the federal migration office.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz met with the country's security chiefs on Wednesday night and said they would "take the necessary consequences." His center-left party is lagging in opinion polls ahead of Germany's February 23 general election. Now. ” He did not specify what these were.

His main electoral challenger, Friedrich Merz, whose centre-right Alliance bloc leads in opinion polls, has reinforced his party's vow to toughen immigration policy. He said Germany had had "misleading asylum and immigration policies" for a decade, ever since Chancellor Angela Merkel, Merz's former rival, allowed large numbers of immigrants to enter the country.

Merz said that if he becomes German chancellor, he will order the interior ministry to permanently control all German borders on his first day in office and "block all illegal entry attempts without exception." He believes that EU rules are "clearly dysfunctional" for Germany The right to the supremacy of domestic law must be exercised.

Meltz added that people who are supposed to leave the country if caught by police can no longer be let go and should be detained and deported as quickly as possible with increased detention capacity.

Merz, who is likely to have to form a coalition with center-left parties to become chancellor, insisted that "compromise on these issues is no longer possible".

The outgoing government has introduced temporary controls at all Germany's borders and claims it has made progress in reducing unauthorized entries and increasing deportations.

The attack in Aschaffenburg follows knife attacks last year in Mannheim and Solingen, in which the suspect was a migrant from Afghanistan and Syria; in the latter case, a rejected asylum seeker. The suspect in last month's Magdeburg Christmas market car attack was a Saudi doctor who had come to the attention of regional authorities in the past.

Mainstream parties are feeling the pinch from strong poll numbers for the far-right Alternative for Germany, which have said they will not continue to work after the election. Dissatisfaction with immigrants is a main pillar of its support, with support in recent surveys ranking second at around 20%.

Alternative candidate for German Chancellor Alice Wedel said on social media platform X that the outgoing parliament should vote next week on closing Germany's borders and deporting irregular migrants.

German authorities said 229,751 people applied for asylum in Germany last year, a 30% decrease from the previous year. There were 18,384 deportations in the first 11 months of this year, and 16,430 in all of 2023.

Opposition politicians complained on Thursday that no more people had been deported to Afghanistan since the first flight in August.