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Far-right residents have clashed with asylum-seekers in a town in eastern Germany that has become a flashpoint for anti-refugee sentiment.

Some 80 men and women fought with 20 migrants and refugees in Bautzen, to the east of Dresden, late on Wednesday. The asylum-seekers were chased to their hostel and put under police guard.

Anti-migrant tensions have been mounting in Bautzen this year. Locals cheered when a building due to house migrants was set on fire in February. The following month, President Joachim Gauck was verbally abused when he visited Bautzen to discuss the influx of refugees in Germany.

Bautzen and the nearby town of Niedergurig are home to four asylum shelters. The town is 60km (38 miles) east of Dresden, where the “anti-Islamisation” Pegida movement began.

Since the arrival last year of 1.1 million irregular migrants and refugees in Germany, some areas, particularly eastern states, have seen a rise in anti-migrant violence as well as support for the anti-Islam AfD party.
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Two people shot dead at a north London flat have been named locally as a mother of nine and her nephew.

They were found wounded at a property in Elmshurst Crescent, East Finchley at about 06:25 BST. Relatives named the pair – said have moved to the UK from Congo in central Africa – as Anny Ekofo, 52, and her nephew Beverly, 21.

The Met’s homicide and major crime command unit is investigating. Mrs Ekofo’s cousin, Fifi Selo, said the family was in shock and “cannot explain what happened”. “They were an amazing family. Anny was the kind of person who was a mum to everybody. She always brought everybody together.”

Both victims were pronounced dead at the scene, police said. Local resident Lizzy Holsgrove said: “About 20 police cars and four or five paramedic cars, and three ambulances sped past my window. “They cordoned off the street very quickly and police were sprinting from the top of the road where they’d stopped. “There had been screaming before the police arrived.”

A UK parliamentary report has severely criticised the intervention by Britain and France that led to the overthrow of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

The foreign affairs committee accused the then PM David Cameron of lacking a coherent strategy for the air campaign. It said the intervention had not been “informed by accurate intelligence”, and that it led to the rise of so-called Islamic State in North Africa. The UK government said it had been an international decision to intervene.

The action had been called for by the Arab League and authorised by the UN Security Council, the Foreign Office added.

An international coalition led by Britain and France launched a campaign of air and missile strikes against Muammar Gaddafi’s forces in March 2011 after the regime threatened to attack the rebel-held city of Benghazi. But after Gaddafi was toppled, Libya descended into violence, with rival governments and the formation of hundreds of militias, while so-called Islamic State, also known as Isil and Daesh, has gained a foothold.

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French prosecutors have placed three young women under formal investigation over a foiled attack near Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.

Ines Madani, 19, Sara Hervouet, 23, and Amel Sakaou, 39, were brought before anti-terrorism judges on Monday. The women are suspected of plotting to blow up a car packed with gas canisters last week, and of having ties to so-called Islamic State (IS). Another woman, Ornella G, 29, is already being investigated in the case.

The car with its licence plates removed and hazard lights on was found on 4 September, prompting an urgent police search. The three women were remanded in custody after being interviewed on Monday, and placed under investigation for involvement in a terrorist conspiracy.

French authorities believe they also planned to strike a train station in the Paris area or to target police, AFP news agency reported. Investigators say the women were directed by IS handlers in Syria, Le Parisien newspaper reported. The three were arrested last Thursday in the Essonne area south of Paris.

During the raid, Sara Hervouet stabbed a police officer with a knife while Ms Madani was shot in the leg while charging another, local media reported. Police said they had found a handwritten pledge of allegiance to IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi inside Ms Madani’s purse.

French media said Sarah Hervouet had also had relationships with French jihadists Larossi Abballa, who killed a police officer and his wife near Paris in June, and Adel Kermiche, one of two men who murdered an elderly Catholic priest in a church in northern France. Both men were shot dead by French police.

France has suffered a series of attacks by jihadists who have declared allegiance to IS, including the massacre of 86 people in Nice by a militant who drove a lorry into crowds.

Three Syrian men have been arrested in Germany on suspicion of being sent by so-called Islamic State (IS) to launch attacks, prosecutors say.

The men – aged 17, 18 and 26 – were detained after a series of pre-dawn raids in the states of Schleswig-Holstein and Lower Saxony on Tuesday. Police are reported to have seized “extensive material”.

But no concrete missions or orders had so far been found, the Federal Public Prosecutor’s office said.

In a statement, it said investigations so far suggested the three had come to Germany in November 2015 with the intention of “carrying out a previously determined order [from IS] or to await further instructions”. They are said to have travelled through Turkey and Greece on false passports.

Investigators believe the men had volunteered for the alleged mission, and that the 17-year-old had been trained in handling weapons and explosives. They were arrested when 200 police and security officers raided several premises including three refugee shelters.

Germany is on edge after a spate of attacks over the summer. Over one week in July, 10 people were killed and dozens more wounded in separate gun, bomb, axe and machete attacks in the south of the country. Three were in Bavaria and one in Baden-Wuerttemberg. Asylum-seekers were involved in two of the attacks. Tuesday’s arrests are likely to be welcomed by ministers who are trying to reassure Germans that they can keep the country safe, our correspondent adds.