One person has been arrested in connection with the investigation into a deadly knife attack in Solingen, western Germany, on Friday evening, in which the perpetrator fled, police said on Saturday.
The police in Düsseldorf (west) said they were checking whether the person arrested had “a possible connection with the crime”. Three people were killed and five others seriously injured in this attack which took place among spectators at a local festival.
The investigation officials were due to speak to the press starting at 3 p.m. local time (11 a.m. in Quebec).
Germany was in shock on Saturday after the criminal act.
“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.
A major police operation has been launched to find the suspect who fled after striking into the crowd. The motives for the crime remain unknown, with Interior Minister Nancy Faeser assuring on Saturday that investigators are working to “determine the context”.
She denounced a “brutal attack” committed around 9:40 p.m. (3:40 p.m. in Quebec) on Friday while thousands of spectators were gathered in front of a stage set up in the center of Solingen, a city of some 160,000 inhabitants, for the launch of several days of festivities.
“The victims and witnesses are currently being questioned,” police said early this morning, reporting a toll of three dead and eight injured, five of them seriously.
“Out of nowhere, a man armed with a knife stabbed people at random and killed them,” regional Interior Minister Herbert Reul described during a visit to the scene overnight.
“Why, nobody knows. We can’t say anything at the moment about the motive, about the person,” he added, calling for caution about the nature of the attack.
“The horrible act in Solingen upsets me, it upsets our country,” said Head of State Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
Call for witnesses
Investigators have appealed to the public to provide any information, including photos and videos, to help with the search.
Many streets in the centre of Solingen, a town located not far from Düsseldorf and north of Cologne, were closed off on Saturday morning, an AFP correspondent noted.
The event was to celebrate the 650e 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.
According to the local daily Solinger Tageblattshortly after 10 p.m. (4 p.m. in Quebec), a member of the organization came on stage to interrupt the concert.
Explaining that emergency services were trying to save the lives of people who had been attacked with knives, he asked the public to leave the scene, the newspaper reported.
Pools of blood
“People left the square in shock, but calmly,” Philipp Müller, one of the organizers, told the newspaper.
A witness also claims to 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.
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 coalition of Social Democrat Olaf Scholz faces key regional elections in the east of the country in a week, where the far-right AfD party is far ahead of the government parties in the polls.
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.