Germany has 'no-go areas', says Merkel

German officials at the local level are understood to have been left stunned by claims from Chancellor Angela Merkel, which were made during a television interview, that the country had "no-go areas" where the police could not go.

The Associated Press reported that local government representatives were dismissive of Merkel's claim that the country has such areas, in which both outsiders and the police were unable to set foot.

On Monday, Merkel told German broadcaster n-tv that she favors a zero-tolerance policy against crime, and she explained that she does not want the nation to have "no-go areas" to which "nobody dares to go".

"There are such areas and one has to call them by their name and do something about them," she told n-tv.

AP said Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert refused to say where the areas were that Merkel referred to. He said on Wednesday "the chancellor's words speak for themselves".

Other senior government ministers also refused to be drawn into the murky waters of admitting that such areas exist, and of saying where they are.

AP said Interior Ministry spokesman Johannes Dimroth attempted to distance his department from blame, saying that if such areas do exist, they are the fault of local authorities, not federal ones, because security is a local matter.

Britain's Sun newspaper noted that opposition German politicians and senior police officers have previously claimed that Germany does indeed have lawless no-go areas, but the government had previously denied their existence.

The paper said Police Union chief Rainer Wendt had, in the past, urged the government to get to grips with crime levels and that he had called upon it to tackle "police-free zones in Germany".