The terrorist attack in Hanau, Germany is connected with the rise of the Alternative for Germany (AfD), a far-right party, and the situation has been getting worse since 2015, Meho Travljanin, the head of the Berlin Islamic Cultural Centre told N1 on Thursday.

“This has paralysed Germany. We've been receiving information the whole day. The German Interior Minister came to Hanau and visited the scene of the crime. There are no details yet, but what we can see is that the victims are youths and migrants, and it seemed the killer picked them out on purpose,” Travljanin said.

Forty-year-old German Tobias Rathjen killed nine people in Hanau, east of Frankfurt. He conducted two armed attacks on shisha-bars, and among the nine victims was also a Bosnian citizen.

The German Federal Prosecutor's Office said the suspect was also among the killed. It is believed he returned home, where he killed his mother and then himself.

The German Interior Minister said the investigation's initial results show the suspect expressed xenophobia on his website.

The killer, who was also an extreme rightist, left a letter, a 24-page manifest and a video-message. In the letter, he said some groups of people, mostly foreigners, need to be killed.

When asked if this attack could be connected with the rise of the far-right in Germany, Travljanin said the far right has become quite successful with their ‘black and white’ politics by making negative statements against Muslims and migrants in Germany.

“This situation's been present in Germany for months. The AfD is undermining democracy and causing a fierce debate in the society about the potential cooperation with these people in the parliament,” Travljanin concluded.