German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday brushed off concerns about a landmark EU-Turkey deal designed to stem the flow of migrants to Europe after critical comments by her Turkish counterpart.

"I am not worried," Merkel told reporters. "Maybe some issues will require more time, but in principle we, for our part, will stick to the agreement."

Germany recorded nearly 1,000 far-right offenses targeting refugee shelters last year, a five-fold annual rise amid a record influx of asylum seekers, the government said Monday.

Presenting the figures, Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said he did not expect a lull in 2016.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday said she had told Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of her "deep concern" over a law lifting immunity for Turkish lawmakers that critics believe is aimed at evicting pro-Kurdish lawmakers from parliament.

"Of course, the lifting of the immunity of one quarter of the deputies is a source of deep concern. I expressed this to the Turkish president and we discussed these questions very openly," she said.

A meeting between Germany's right-wing populist AfD party and a Muslim organization ended in acrimony Monday after less than an hour.

A co-chair of the Alternative for Germany (AfD), Frauke Petry, said there was nothing left to talk about after the Muslim group had compared her party to the Nazis.

A lawmaker from Chancellor Angela Merkel's party on Thursday read out in parliament a crude satirical poem about Turkey's president, which had been at the heart of a free speech row.

Seeking to condemn the content of the poem that accused Recep Tayyip Erdogan of bestiality and pedophilia, Christian Democrat MP Detlef Seif recited key parts of the text by German TV comedian Jan Boehmermann.

A mentally disturbed German man carrying a survival knife Tuesday stabbed to death one person and slashed three others in a bloody dawn attack at a railway station.

A German court Friday threw out sexual assault charges against an Algerian man stemming from New Year's Eve violence in Cologne after the victim said she could not identify the defendant.

The panel said it had no evidence that the 26-year-old was part of a group of about 10 men who allegedly surrounded, groped and robbed the woman at Cologne central railway station.

Germany insisted Friday it expects Turkey to stick to a deal Berlin helped broker to limit refugee flows to the EU even after the announced resignation of its prime minister.

"The chancellor (Angela Merkel) has worked very well until now with Turkish Prime Minister (Ahmet) Davutoglu and all Turkish representatives and we assume that this good and constructive cooperation will continue with the new Turkish prime minister," German government spokesman Georg Streiter told reporters.

Chancellor Angela Merkel said Friday that Germany was considering sending troops to Lithuania as part of a NATO mission to reinforce the alliance's eastern flank with Russia.

However Merkel stressed that any deployment should aim to avoid inflaming tensions with Moscow.

Germany's interior minister Friday put the onus on Italy to halt a new mass influx of migrants to northern Europe, lending backing to Austria in a row with Rome.

"We share Austria's position that there should not be a repeat of what happened along the Balkan route last autumn on the road from the Italian border northwards," said Thomas de Maiziere after a meeting with his Austrian counterpart Wolfgang Sobotka.