German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has clashed with AfD leader Alice Weidel in parliament, calling her party a “destructive force” with a migration policy that amounts to “ethnic cleansing” for skilled workers.

Merz was addressing the Bundestag in the aftermath of the anti-immigration party’s sweeping victory in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt where it won almost 44% of the vote, while the chancellor’s conservatives saw their vote halved.

Weidel told MPs that voters had shown that Merz’s coalition with the centre left was a total failure and his time was up.

Merz hit back saying the AfD had harmed German interests by backing Russia, and its “remigration” policy would affect millions.

It is not yet clear whether the party will be able to form a government or not in Saxony-Anhalt, having fallen three seats short of an outright majority. No far-right party has won power in any of Germany’s 16 states since World War Two, and Merz has admitted the “seismic” result has changed Germany.

The AfD’s success has been praised by US President Donald Trump, who said “the Populist Party in Germany just had a really big night”, linking the victory to “absolutely horrible immigration rules and regulations”.

The AfD in Saxony-Anhalt has been labelled as “right-wing extremist” by German domestic intelligence and the party has promised a “deportation and remigration” offensive targeting irregular migrants.

Trump had been due to speak by phone to the German chancellor on Wednesday to mark the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in the US, but the government spokesman in Berlin said the call had been postponed without saying why. No new date has been set.

Repeatedly heckled by AfD MPs, the chancellor told Weidel that one in six skilled workers had a migration background, and if her party had its way then its policy would amount to “nothing other than an ethnic cleansing in the skilled trades based on skin colour and origin”.

While the government understood some deportations were needed, he said it made a careful distinction between those who contributed to German prosperity and those without permanent residency.

Disruption by AfD MPs became so loud that at one point Bundestag President Julia Klöckner threatened to start expelling people from the chamber: “We are not on a football pitch.”

Weidel said mass migration had left Germans with daily knife violence and attacks on trains and in stations, but Merz warned that the AfD’s plans would mean that no single care home, hospital or restaurant could function.

As leader of the main opposition party in the Bundestag, Weidel opened the session by telling Merz his Christian Democrats had been “pulverised” in Saxony-Anhalt, after winning 17.2% of the vote, and she accused his government with the Social Democrats of driving Germany towards bankruptcy.

Merz said her party had not won an outright majority in Saxony-Anhalt and it would not achieve one in Germany.

“You are and will remain a destructive force,” he said, accusing the party of cheating the voters by saying before the election that their candidate for premier, Ulrich Siegmund, would only rule if he won a majority, but hours after the vote deciding to go and find one.

The AfD has opened the door to working with another party, perhaps the left-wing populist BSW, as long as it backs Siegmund to be state premier.

Siegmund’s number two in Saxony-Anhalt, has even suggested that Merz’s CDU could work with his party, if it abandons the so-called firewall (Brandmauer), under which no mainstream party will work with the far right.

British, French, and Canadian leaders have affirmed their “commitment to protect the two-state solution” in the face of the “systematic expansion” of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

British Prime Minister Andy Burnham, French President Emmanuel Macron, and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said in the joint statement that, “A two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is critical for peace, stability and security in the Middle East and beyond.

They further emphasised that settlements “pose a direct and urgent threat to that vision for peace,

“Settlements are illegal under international law,” they said, condemning the Israeli government’s latest decision to progress the E1 settlement, and the “dramatic increase in settler violence.

The three countries will therefore ban the importation of goods from settlements and enforce targeted measures against settlements and those who facilitate them or profit from them, according to the joint statement.

The three leaders also reiterated their desire for a close and productive partnership with Israel. “We support a safe and secure Israel, living alongside a safe and secure Palestine,” they said.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) expressed its concern Wednesday over the continued rise in attacks on schools around the world.

UNESCO said this in a press statement on the occasion of the International Day to Protect Education from Attacks, based on the latest global data, which revealed an alarming escalation in such attacks in 2025.

It said that 1,680 attacks on schools were verified by the United Nations in 2025, an increase of 33 per cent compared to 1,265 attacks in 2024.

More broadly, an estimated 258 million children and adolescents have had their education disrupted by crises worldwide, including 93 million who are entirely out of school, UNESCO said.

Nearly 80 per cent of all out-of-school crisis-affected children, some 74 million, live in just 20 countries facing the world’s most severe crises, UNESCO said.

The organisation noted that barriers to learning are steepest for the most vulnerable within these settings, with 74 per cent of refugee children and 52 per cent of internally displaced children.

UNESCO Director-General Khaled El-Enany said schools and universities must always be protected, calling on all parties to conflicts to respect international law and ensure that education can continue safely.

The International Day to Protect Education from Attack was established by a unanimous decision of the United Nations General Assembly in 2020, with September 9 designated as the annual observance.