(Geneva) A man injured half a dozen passers-by, two of them seriously, with bladed weapons on Wednesday afternoon in the town of Zofingue, in northern Switzerland, before being arrested, police said .
The suspect “would be of foreign origin and would be around 40 years old”, indicates the police of the canton of Aargau in a press release, admitting to not knowing much about the man who is hospitalized and under surveillance.
However, she believes that he acted alone and that the population is no longer in danger. She has not yet said anything about what could have motivated the attacker.
He “used sharp and sharp bladed weapons”, with which he injured six people “including two seriously”, specifies the press release published late Wednesday evening.
All the injured remained hospitalized Wednesday evening.
At the station
around 4 p.m. local time (10 a.m. Eastern time), the man first attacked a passerby at the train station in this town of some 12,000 inhabitants, which is about sixty kilometers south of Basel and the same distance west of Zurich.
He then walked and attacked several other people apparently at random before retreating into a house, according to the press release.
After approximately two hours, and after being contacted by a specialized team, the man was arrested by the police.
He was also injured and was taken to hospital, said cantonal police spokesman Bernhard Graser.
He clarified daily Zofinger Tagblatt that the assailant was self-inflicted.
Pregnant woman
Among the injured are two members of the teaching staff of the Zofingen cantonal school, the director of the establishment, Patrick Strössler, confirmed to the news site 20minuten.ch.
He said they were attacked outside the school grounds, and gave no indication of their state of health.
The regional daily Aargauer Zeitung reports the testimony of a reader whose pregnant wife was allegedly attacked by the stranger “with a metal object”.
The woman “was injured in the face and has some swelling, but is doing well given the circumstances,” the husband told the newspaper.
She was transported to the cantonal hospital of Aarau, about twenty kilometers from Zofingen.
The police launched an appeal for witnesses and asked the population to send them videos and photos for the purposes of the investigation.
Deployment of force
Images broadcast by theAargauer Zeitung show a large deployment of police and emergency services.
In particular, we can see members of the police in helmets and equipped with bulletproof vests taking equipment from a black 4X4, handguns at their belts. Other police officers come out of a vehicle that has arrived in a hurry, armed with assault rifles.
We also see several ambulances and a helicopter.
So that the latter could land, the local football club, SC Zofingen, was forced to cancel its training sessions in order to free up the pitch, specifies the daily.