Germany unveils plans to ramp up security after attacks

Germany unveiled a raft of proposals Thursday to ramp up security after a spate of attacks in the country, two of them claimed by the Islamic State.

Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said the plans include creating thousands of security jobs, and making it easier to detain individuals deemed to be threats to public safety and to deport foreign terror suspects, German news agency DPA reported.

Authorities are also considering screening the social media profiles of migrants, de Maiziere added. "Nobody can guarantee absolute security, but we need to do everything within our power," he told reporters.

The plans would be in place by the end of Chancellor Angela Merkel's third term in late 2017, he said, according to DPA.

Germany saw four attacks in the space of just one week last month, three of them carried out by asylum-seekers.

On July 18, an Afghan teenager armed with an ax wounded five passengers on a train in Würzburg, central Germany, and on July 24, a Syrian refugee blew himself up in Ansbach, 25 miles southwest of Nuremberg, injuring 15 people. Both attacks were claimed by the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.

In another attack, nine people were shot and killed by an 18-year-old German-Iranian in Munich and a woman was stabbed to death by a Syrian asylum-seeker at a restaurant in Reutlingen, near Stuttgart. The stabbing is not believed to be terror-related.

More than a million asylum-seekers entered Germany last month.  Merkel said Germany would stand by its principles of offering shelter to refugees after the policy came under fire, but said that she would do “everything humanly possible” to keep the country safe.