German Chancellor Olaf Scholz vowed to toughen knife laws and step up deportations of rejected asylum-seekers Monday as he visited the scene of the knife attack in which a suspected Islamic extremist from Syria is accused of killing three people.

Scholz, speaking after he joined regional officials in laying a white flower at a makeshift memorial in the western city of Solingen, said he was "furious and angry" about the attack, in which eight people also were wounded.