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By Bloomberg

German government bonds declined, extending losses in their worst week in more than 16 years.

The drop in the region’s benchmark securities and in other European bonds helped drive a global fixed-income rout this week. Selling that started Tuesday, when a report showed inflation was returning to the currency bloc, accelerated the next day when European Central Bank President Mario Draghi indicated the ECB would do nothing to combat higher volatility in markets. The declines leave a Bloomberg index of euro-area bonds, which had returned 4.6 percent in 2015 as recently as April, with a 0.6 percent loss this year through Thursday.

“The rise has been very strong,” said Luca Cazzulani, a senior fixed-income strategist at UniCredit SpA. “Inflation surprised to the upside and there was an expectation that the ECB would be more dovish, whereas Draghi was more neutral and talked about having to get used to volatility. However, when talking about how yields are moving up, you should not forget they had been declining for several months.”

The yield on German 10-year bunds rose six basis points, or 0.06 percentage point, to 0.90 percent as of 9:04 a.m. London time Friday after climbing to as high as 0.996 percent on Thursday, the most since September.

The securities’ yield, which was as low as 0.049 percent in April, is set for a 41 basis-point increase this week, the most since October 1998.

The 0.5 percent security due in February 2025 fell 0.54, or 5.40 euros per 1,000-euro ($1,126) face amount, to 96.325, down from 100.12 on May 29.