(Berlin) Three people were seriously injured on Saturday in an ICE train in Bavaria, in southern Germany, in a knife attack in which the alleged perpetrator was arrested and the motive for which remains unknown.
The three victims, seriously affected, were admitted to Bavarian hospitals. Their days are no longer in danger, according to the Neumarkt in der Oberplatz police.
The alleged perpetrator, a 27-year-old man, was arrested and there is “no longer any danger”, police said, after rumors had raised the presence of several attackers.
Investigators have not given more details at this stage on the alleged assailant but according to several German media, he is a Syrian who may suffer from psychiatric disorders. The investigation was at this stage entrusted to the Nuremberg prosecutor’s office, and not to the federal prosecutor’s office in charge of terrorist cases.
“Horrible”
Police were alerted at around 8 a.m. GMT of a knife attack on an ICE high-speed train traveling between Bavaria and Hamburg with around 300 passengers on board.
The high-speed ICE train was stopped at Seubersdorf station, between Nuremberg and Regensburg, in the south of the country. A large police force was deployed on the spot. The train was evacuated and the rail line suspended until further notice.
PHOTO AYHAN UYANIK, REUTERS
“This knife attack is horrible”, responded the Minister of the Interior, Horst Seehofer. “I want to thank everyone, especially the police and train staff, for their courageous action, which has helped prevent even worse,” he added in a statement on Twitter.
The motive for the crime is still unclear and will now be determined.
Horst Seehofer, Minister of the Interior, on Twitter
These facts occur in a tense context in Germany, faced in recent years with a double threat of terrorism, jihadist and right-wing extremist.
The German authorities are in particular on the alert concerning the Islamist threat, in particular since an attack with the ram truck claimed by the group Islamic State which had 12 dead in December 2016 in Berlin. This jihadist attack is the deadliest ever committed on German soil.
” Line of sight ”
Since 2000, the German authorities have foiled 23 such attack attempts, the Minister of the Interior said 20 years after September 11, 2001.
“Germany and Western Europe are still in the crosshairs of radical Islamists,” he warned.
Since 2013, the number of Islamists considered dangerous in Germany has increased fivefold to currently stand at 615, according to the Interior Ministry.
Several of the attacks or attempts were committed by asylum seekers – a Tunisian, a Syrian and an Afghan – who arrived in Germany as a result of the 2015 migration crisis.
Chancellor Angela Merkel then opened the doors of the country wide to some 900,000 asylum seekers.
For the authorities, none of the perpetrators, however, came to Europe carrying ISIS orders, unlike some of the attackers of November 13, 2015 in Paris. All of them seem to have organized their actions on their own, often under the influence of mental disorders.
On June 25, three people were killed and five others injured in a knife attack in Würzburg, in southern Germany, by a Somali man suffering from psychiatric problems.
Germany remains a target for jihadist groups, in particular due to its involvement in the coalition fighting ISIS in Iraq and Syria and in that deployed in Afghanistan until last August.