German housing policy for patients with mental illness under scrutiny

The interior minister of Germany's southern state of Bavaria is to review policies on housing for patients with serious mental illnesses after two people, including a 2-year-old child, were killed in the city of Aschaffenburg.

"It is not easy, under our understanding of freedom, to decide that someone must come to a closed facility and be locked up," Joachim Herrmann said on Thursday.

"But of course we also have to recognize the obvious risks for our population," the minister told the regional public broadcaster Bayerischer Rundfunk.

Herrmann said discussions must take place with experts to "see whether the right standards are really being applied in terms of the risk to the public and the risk to other people."

The attack in a park on Wednesday was carried out by a 28-year-old Afghan asylum seeker believed to have had a history of mental health problems.

The suspect had previously been arrested three times for violent acts, Herrmann said on Wednesday, and was admitted to psychiatric institutions after each incident.

According to the latest information, the 2-year-old boy who was killed in the attack was from Morocco, while an injured girl is from Syria.

The minister said investigators would need to clear up whether the suspect intentionally attacked "children with a migration background."