German police have detained a 15 year old and are investigating whether there is a connection between them and a knife attack in the western German city of Solingen on Friday that killed three people and left eight others injured.
Prosecutor Markus Caspers said that police were looking at a terror motive, adding that there was no other obvious motive and that the attacker appeared to be unknown to the victims.
The chief of police said officers did not believe anyone else was involved in the attack, responding to a question about social media speculation that there were multiple attackers. He appealed to the public for more information and urged people not to speculate or share information on social media.
Investigators found multiple knives in the area but do not yet know which, if any, were used in the attack. German media earlier reported that a weapon had been found in a bin in central Solingen.
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Police also confirmed two men and a woman were killed in the attack. The two men are reportedly aged 67 and 56, and the woman aged 56.
The incident occurred at about 9.40pm (7.40pm Irish time) on Friday, when the man attacked multiple people with a knife, the police said, adding that the motive remained unclear.
“The perpetrator must be quickly caught and punished to the fullest extent of the law,” German chancellor Olaf Scholz said in a post on X.
Earlier, Germany’s minister for interior affairs, Nancy Faeser, said security authorities were doing everything they could to catch the person and investigate the background to the attack, which occurred at the Fronhof, a market square in Solingen where live bands were playing. It was during a festival marking the 650th anniversary of the city in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, which borders the Netherlands.
Police had cordoned off the square on Saturday, and passersby placed candles and flowers outside the barricades.
“We are full of shock and grief,” Solingen mayor Tim-Oliver Kurzbach told journalists on Saturday morning.
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The German musician who goes by the name Topic said he was playing on a nearby stage when the incident occurred. He was told about what happened but was asked to continue “to avoid causing a mass panic attack”, he posted on Instagram.
He was eventually told to stop, and “since the attacker was still on the run, we hid in a nearby store while police helicopters circled above us”, Topic wrote.
Authorities cancelled the remainder of the weekend festival.
The perpetrator aimed specifically for people’s throats, one police spokesperson said. A second spokesperson later would not confirm or deny that detail, and pointed to a news conference scheduled for the afternoon.
Fatal stabbings and shootings are relatively uncommon in Germany. The government said earlier this month it wanted to toughen rules on knives that can be carried in public by reducing the maximum length allowed.
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In June, a 29-year-old policeman died after being stabbed in Mannheim during an attack on a right-wing demonstration. A stabbing attack on a train in 2021 injured several.
North Rhine-Westphalia’s interior minister Herbert Reul visited the scene early on Saturday. He told reporters it was a targeted attack on human life but declined to speculate on the motive.
Solingen, well-known for its knife-manufacturing industry, is a city of some 165,000 people. – Reuters