海角大神

The self-proclaimed Islamic State (IS) has taken responsibility for an attack by a 17-year-old Afghan asylum seeker who wounded five people with an axe near the southern German city of W眉rzburg on Monday, calling the attacker an IS 鈥渟oldier鈥�.

German officials said that they could not verify the claim of IS involvement, made through news affiliate Amaq. Bavarian interior minister, Joachim Herrmann, said that a 鈥溾�� had been found in the room where the teenager was staying with a foster family in the region, according to The New York Times.

Four victims were wounded on board a train near聽W眉rzburg, while another woman walking her dog nearby was also hospitalized.聽Two of the train victims, members of a family of tourists from Hong Kong, suffered injuries, according to German prosecutors. The suspect himself was killed by police outside of the train after a passenger pulled the emergency brake.

The incident is the latest in a string of attacks said to be inspired by IS that target civilians in countries around the world. And some say the fact that the suspect was an unaccompanied minor who had sought asylum could accelerate a chipping-away of support for Germany's generous policies toward refugees from war-torn countries like Syria and Afghanistan.

Under German policy, migrants who are fleeing war can be eligible to stay. That isn鈥檛 the case for 鈥渆conomic migrants,鈥� or those seeking opportunity, not asylum, as the German government has 聽of people falling in the latter category.

But after violent incidents, distinct categories of people hoping for the right to stay tend to get mixed up in the public's mind, further feeding some Germans' resentment for unpopular policies, according to Demetrios G. Papademetriou, a senior fellow and president emeritus at the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, D.C.聽

鈥淓verybody [in Germany鈥檚 government] will be on the defensive over the next month,鈥� Dr. Papademetriou tells 海角大神 in a phone interview.

鈥淭his fellow belonged to the most vulnerable of classes,鈥� he says. 鈥淚 could guarantee you that the outcome of his [asylum] adjudication would [have been] positive, at least until he reached the age of eighteen ... No one in Europe is ready to say no to any unaccompanied minors.鈥�

As of late January,聽had arrived in Germany as of the end of January 2016, according to the Federal Association for Unaccompanied Minor Refugees. One in three of those applications were submitted by Afghan minors.

Faced with an unprecedented influx of refugees into Europe, German Chancellor Angela Merkel took an unabashedly idealist stance, saying in 2015 that there would be 鈥渘o upper limit鈥� to the right to asylum and . Some 1.1 million people that year, according to the interior ministry, although not all of them will be awarded it 鈥� and only a fraction have been adjudicated.

But as time has worn on, public opinion has grown less enthusiastic. 62 percent of Germans feel the country has taken in too many asylum seekers, , up from 43 percent in November 2015.聽

More than 1,200 women have reported being assaulted by crowds of men, many of whom were allegedly foreign, last New Year's Eve in the city of Cologne. As of early July, .聽In retribution, a wave of arson attacks targeted refugee centers across Germany. And in March regional elections, the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany party in a country where the far right is traditionally weak.

Kaija Schilde, a professor at Boston University鈥檚 Pardee School of Global Studies who studies EU security and migration policy, thinks the attack in W眉rzburg could lead to tighter controls on borders across the Union.

鈥淕ermany can鈥檛 control who comes. It can only control who stays,鈥� she tells the Monitor. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 the elephant in the room.鈥�

Dr. Schilde says that instead of piling on controls on Europe鈥檚 borders, EU member countries should cooperate more on security and intelligence. Right now, 鈥渢hey have to be draconian at borders because they lack an internal coordinating body for security.鈥�

Merkel has defended her policies , as well as for humanitarian reasons, saying they would help fill gaps in the German workforce.聽But backlash over the incident in Cologne appears to have tempered her own enthusiasm somewhat. She has since said that the when conflicts end.

鈥淚f this is a one-off incident, this will be forgotten,鈥� says Papademetriou. 鈥淏ut if there is another incident that people will classify for political reasons as similar to this, all bets are off.鈥�