Leave it to the Euro-trash to get upset by even the mildest of joy at the killing of Osama bin Laden.

(Spiegel) — On Monday, Chancellor Angela Merkel said she was “glad” about the killing of Osama bin Laden. Now, though, criticism of the comment is mounting — even within her own party. German Foreign Minister Westerwelle, meanwhile, is calling on the West to be careful in its reaction to the news.

As the news broke late Sunday night that the world’s leading terrorist, Osama bin Laden, had been killed during a US raid on a compound in Pakistan, Americans took to the streets to celebrate the demise of the figurehead behind the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, which left more than 3,000 people dead.

On Monday morning in Berlin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel met reporters for an approximately six-minute long press briefing on the development. “I am glad that it was successful, the killing of Bin Laden,” she said.

That statement is now being heavily criticized in German political and religious circles, including among members of Merkel’s own party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). And Germany’s Foreign Minister, Guido Westerwelle, of Merkel’s coalition party, the Free Democrats (FDP), is calling on Western nations to temper their responses to the news of Osama bin Laden’s death.

“We must be careful, that we in the West — with understanding of the relief felt — do not send images into the world that could again lead to incitement or to the heroization of al-Qaida,” he told the conservative German daily Die Welt Wednesday.

At the same time, Westerwelle expressed understanding of Merkel’s comments by saying that the death of Bin Laden was “good news for the entire world. I think that it is understandable to have a feeling of relief that this terrorist who had thousands of victims on his conscience cannot continue to spread his terror.”

Merkel’s remark came at the end of a question and answer session during her press conference on Monday, and she went on to say: “I think that for the people in America, but also for us in Germany, it is news that one of the heads of international terrorism, who killed so many people . . . was killed and therefore cannot operate anymore. That is what counts for me now, and therefore I conveyed my respect for this success to the American president.”

A vice president of German parliament, Katrin Göring-Eckhardt, told the daily newspaper Berliner Zeitung: “As a Christian, I can only say that it is not a reason to celebrate, when someone is killed in a targeted way.” Göring-Eckhardt, a member of the Greens, said Bin Laden should have been arrested and put on trial.