Germany | Solingen attacker still on the run, terrorist lead considered

(Solingen) German police are continuing their active search on Saturday for the perpetrator of the deadly knife attack committed the day before at a festival in Solingen, in the west of the country, and are not ruling out a terrorist motive for the act which shocked Germany.

Police announced the arrest of a 15-year-old boy earlier today on suspicion of “failure to report” a criminal act.

Witnesses reported seeing him, shortly before the incident, discussing the attack with a man who could be the murderer, said Düsseldorf prosecutor general Markus Caspers.

Struck among thousands of spectators at a local festival on Friday evening, two men aged 56 and 67, as well as a 56-year-old woman, were killed, and eight people were injured, four of them seriously.

“It was a very targeted attack on the neck” of the victims, local police chief Thorsten Fleiss noted after analyzing initial images. Investigators said they had video of the assault.

“We have not been able to identify a motive so far, but we assume, in view of all the circumstances, that the initial suspicion of a terrorist-motivated act cannot be excluded,” the prosecutor said.

“No other motive is evident at this time,” he added.

Stay united

At the end of the day, German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser visited Solingen, calling on the country to “remain united” in the face of this “horrible attack”.

“Let us not allow ourselves to be divided,” she said, while denouncing “those who want to sow hatred.”

The far-right AfD party, among other things, blamed alleged shortcomings in security policy at regional and federal level after the attack.

The coalition of Social Democratic Chancellor Olaf Scholz faces key regional elections in the east of the country in a week, where the AfD is far ahead of the governing parties in the polls.

“The culprit must be arrested quickly and punished to the full extent of the law,” urged German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who said he was “devastated,” on the X network.

Thousands of spectators gathered in front of a stage set up in the centre of Solingen, a town of some 160,000 people, for the launch of several days of festivities.

Police have urged caution over the attacker’s motives and physical description.

In late July in the United Kingdom, a knife attack in which three young girls were killed led to several days of riots, fuelled in part by false information about the identity of the attacker.

The event was to celebrate the 650^e anniversary of this city in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia and its cultural diversity. The festivities, initially planned until Sunday, have been cancelled.

“We are all in a state of shock, horror and great sadness,” wrote the mayor of this Ruhr area municipality, Tim-Oliver Kurzbach.

Pools of blood

A witness told the local daily: Solinger Tageblatt having been a few meters from the attack, not far from the stage, “understanding from the expression on the singer’s face that something was wrong.”

“And then, a meter away from me, a person fell,” said the man, Lars Breitzke. When he turned around, he saw people lying on the ground and several pools of blood.

Investigators, searching for the murderer’s weapon, seized several knives around the crime scene.

German authorities have been on high alert in recent years in the face of a dual terrorist threat: jihadism and right-wing extremism.

In August, the Interior Minister announced that she wanted to ban knives longer than 6 centimetres from public spaces, with some members of the government coalition even calling for a total ban, in the face of a resurgence in knife attacks.

The deadliest jihadist attack on German soil dates back to December 2016: a truck attack claimed by the Islamic State group left 12 dead at a Christmas market in the centre of Berlin.

Another threat looms over the country, embodied by the extreme right, after several deadly attacks in recent years targeting community or religious places.