Berlin (AFP) — A newly-elected German town mayor was badly wounded in a stabbing attack Tuesday that Chancellor Friedrich Merz condemned as a “heinous act”.

The attack on Iris Stalzer, 57, mayor-elect of Herdecke near the western city of Dortmund, took place shortly after noon near her home, said public broadcaster WDR.

“We fear for her life,” Merz said on X, demanding that the crime and its background “must now be swiftly clarified”.

The details of the attack or its suspected motive were not immediately known as local police did not answer AFP’s phone calls or issue a statement.

Stalzer of the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) had just been elected mayor of the town in the industrial Ruhr area on September 28.

In Berlin, the SPD parliamentary group leader Matthias Miersch sai

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