24 August 2024 , 21:32
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ISIS has claimed responsibility for the knife attack that killed three people at a festival in Germany.
Eight others were wounded when the attacker started stabbing people at random in Solingen, near Dusseldorf, on Friday night.
A 15-year-old boy has been arrested on suspicion of being linked to the rampage but the knifeman is still on the loose.
Witnesses heard the attacker – said by police to have targeted victims’ throats – telling the teenager ‘I’m going to stab everyone’, according to local reports.
Hendrik Wuest, premier of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, described Friday evening’s attack during a festival in the city as an act of terror.
‘This attack has struck at the heart of our country,’ he told reporters.
Interior minister Nancy Faeser said authorities were doing all they could to catch the assailant.
The so-called Islamic State group said in a statement on its Telegram account that the attack was carried out by one of its members ‘in revenge for Muslims in Palestine and everywhere’.
It did not immediately provide any evidence for its assertion and it was not clear how close any relationship between the attacker and ISIS was.
The attack took place in the Fronhof, a market square in Solingen where live bands were playing as part of a festival marking the city’s 650th anniversary.
A police official, Thorsten Fleiss, said the assailant appeared to aim for his victims’ throats.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz said in a post on X: ‘The perpetrator must be quickly caught and punished to the fullest extent of the law.’
Police cordoned off the square on Saturday and passers-by placed candles and flowers outside the barriers.
‘We are full of shock and grief,’ Solingen Mayor Tim-Oliver Kurzbach told journalists.
German musician DJ Topic described being told about the attack but instructed to keep playing ‘to avoid causing a mass panic attack’ in a post 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’, he wrote.
Authorities cancelled the remainder of the weekend festival.
Fatal stabbings and shootings are relatively rare 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.
In June, a 29-year-old policeman was fatally stabbed in Mannheim during an attack on a right-wing demonstration. A stabbing attack on a train in 2021 injured several people.
North Rhine-Westphalia’s interior minister, Herbert Reul, visited the scene in Solingen early on Saturday. He told reporters it was a targeted attack on human life.
Solingen, well known for its knife manufacturing industry, is a city of some 165,000 people.
The episode comes ahead of three state elections next month in Thuringia, Saxony and Brandenburg, in which the anti-immigrant far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) has a chance of winning.
Though the motive and identity of the assailant were not known, a top AfD candidate for one of the state elections, Bjoern Hoecke, seized on Friday’s attack, posting on X: ‘Do you really want to get used to this? Free yourselves and end this insanity of forced multiculturalism.’