Burka ban to be proposed in security clampdown in Germany

Germany's interior minister will back plans to ban the burka as part of a raft of anti-terror measures, local media say.

Thomas de Maiziere also proposes deporting criminals more quickly and relaxing doctor confidentiality rules.

He is due to announce some ideas on Thursday, and back some ideas from ministers in his party next week.

There have been repeated attacks in German cities recently, some of them related to Islamist terror.

In July, an axe-wielding teenager from Afghanistan injured five people on a train in Wuerzburg before he was shot dead by police.

The same month, a failed asylum seeker from Syria killed himself and injured 15 people when he set off a bomb outside a music festival in Ansbach.

Both attacks were claimed by the so-called Islamic State group