(Solingen) German police, who are actively searching for the perpetrator of a deadly knife attack at a festival in Solingen, in the west of the country, arrested two people on Saturday as the Islamic State group (IS) claimed responsibility for the act that shocked Germany.
“The author of the attack on a gathering of Christians in the city of Solingen,” which left three dead, “is a soldier” of the EI, the jihadist group claimed in a statement transmitted via its propaganda organ Amaq.
The man acted “to avenge the Muslims of Palestine and everywhere else,” adds the text released in the evening.
At the same time, an asylum seekers’ accommodation centre in Solingen was raided by special forces, leading to the arrest of a man.
The police have not given any details about his identity or his possible involvement in the events.
The fire is located in the centre of Solingen, not far from the square where the attack took place.
Earlier in the day, investigators arrested a 15-year-old boy on suspicion of “failure to report” a criminal act.
PHOTO ROBERTO PFEIL, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
A woman lights a candle at a makeshift memorial for the victims of the Solingen knife attack.
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.
The latter added that the possibility of a terrorist act was “not excluded”.
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, noted local police chief Thorsten Fleiss after analyzing initial images.
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.”
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.
PHOTO ROBERTO PFEIL, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
The city centre of Solingen, a town of some 160,000 people, was packed with people on Friday evening for the launch of several days of festivities when the murderer struck.
Following the attack in Germany, the far-right AfD party, among other things, blamed alleged shortcomings in security policy at regional and federal level.
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 the chancellor, who said he was “devastated,” on the X network.
The city centre of Solingen, a town of some 160,000 people, was packed with people on Friday evening for the launch of several days of festivities when the murderer struck.
The event was to celebrate the 650e anniversary of this city in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia and its cultural diversity.
Pools of blood
A witness told local daily Solinger Tageblatt that he was just a few metres from the attack, not far from the stage, and “understood from the singer’s facial expression that something was wrong”.
PHOTO THILO SCHMUELGEN, REUTERS
A man writes a note while meditating near the scene of the attack.
“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.
“Our country is also in the crosshairs of jihadist organizations,” warned Minister Nancy Faeser on August 12, a threat that has been reinforced since the start of the conflict on October 7, 2023 between Israel and the Islamic movement Hamas.
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.
This summer, the Minister of the Interior 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.