German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday “firmly” rejected calls to reverse her welcoming stance towards refugees following a series of brutal attacks in the country.

Merkel told reporters that the assailants “wanted to undermine our sense of community, our openness and our willingness to help people in need”.

“We firmly reject this,” she said.

Merkel, who interrupted a summer holiday at her cottage north of Berlin to face the media in the capital, told reporters that four brutal assaults within a week were “shocking, oppressive and depressing” but not a sign that authorities had lost control.

“Taboos of civilisation are being broken,” she said, referring to a series of deadly attacks in France, Belgium, Turkey and the US state of Florida as well as Germany. “These acts happened in places where any of us could have been.”

But she repeated her rallying cry from last year when she opened the borders to people fleeing war and persecution, many from Syria, which brought nearly 1.1 million migrants and refugees to the country in 2015.

“I am still convinced today that ‘we can do it’ — it is our historic duty and this is a historic challenge in times of globalisation,” she said. “We have already achieved very, very much in the last 11 months.”

“The terrorists want to make us lose sight of what is important to us, break down our cohesion and sense of community as well as inhibiting our way of life, our openness and our willingness take in people who are in need,” she added. “They see hatred and fear between cultures and they see hatred and fear between religions. We stand decisively against that,” she added.

Source: FRANCE 24 with AFP, 28 July 2016