The leader of Germany’s centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) has called for an immediate halt to the admission of refugees from Syria and Afghanistan in response to the recent deadly knife attack in the western city of Solingen. Friedrich Merz urged Chancellor Olaf Scholz to take swift and decisive action to prevent further terrorist attacks in Germany, in his newsletter published on Sunday. “It is not the knives that are the problem, but the people walking around with them,” Merz wrote. “In the majority of cases, these are refugees, in the majority of offences, Islamist motives are b…