German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, has reiterated that recent attacks in the country involving asylum-seekers would not change its willingness to take in refugees.

She said the attackers “wanted to undermine our sense of community, our openness and our willingness to help people in need. We firmly reject this”.

But she did propose new measures to improve security, including information sharing, deciphering web chatter and tackling arms sales on the internet.

A suicide bomb attack in Ansbach that injured 15 people was carried out by a Syrian who had been denied asylum but given temporary leave to stay.

An earlier attack on a train in Wuerzburg on 18 July that wounded five people was also carried out by an asylum seeker from Afghanistan, with both attackers claiming allegiance to the so-called Islamic State.

The deadliest recent attack – in Munich on 22 July which left nine dead – was carried out by a German teenager of Iranian extraction but was not jihadist-related.

Chancellor Merkel, who interrupted her summer holiday to hold the news conference in Berlin, said the asylum seekers who had carried out the attacks had “shamed the country that welcomed them”.

But she insisted that those fleeing persecution and war had a right to be protected, and Germany would not deny shelter to the deserving.

Referring to the attacks that have taken place in France, Belgium, Turkey, the US and elsewhere, she said they were intended to “spread fear and hatred between cultures and between religions”.

But in reference to her famous phrase “We can do this” – uttered last year when she agreed to take in a million migrants – Merkel said: “I am still convinced today that “we can do it”.

“It is our historic duty and this is a historic challenge in times of globalisation. We have already achieved very, very much in the last 11 months,” she said.