The suspect in the stabbing attack claimed by the Islamic State group has surrendered to authorities and confessed, police say

The main suspect in the deadly knife attack in Solingen, western Germany, has surrendered to authorities and confessed, local police said in a statement on Sunday (August 25). The man, a 26-year-old Syrian, “surrendered to investigating authorities and claimed responsibility for the attack,” The attack in Solingen on Friday evening left three dead and eight injured. The Islamic State group (IS) claimed responsibility for the attack, which shocked Germany.

“The one we have been looking for all day has recently been taken into custody in our premises,” said the Interior Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, Herbert Reul, on public television ARD during the night.“The real suspect, we just arrested him,” he added, without giving details on the circumstances but specifying that investigators had “evidence”.

The Islamic State group (IS) claimed responsibility for the act, which shocked Germany. “The author of the attack on a gathering of Christians in the city of Solingen” “is a soldier” of the EI, the jihadist group had affirmed in the evening in a press release transmitted via its propaganda organ Amaq. The man acted “to avenge the Muslims of Palestine and everywhere else”, add the text.

The suspect surrendered to investigators, Bild reported. Two other people were arrested on Saturday while the main suspect was still on the run. The first is a 15-year-old boy suspected of “failure to report” a planned criminal act. Investigators are investigating whether he may have been in contact with the perpetrator of the attack. The second arrest took place on Saturday evening in a refugee shelter in Solingen, not far from the scene of the attack.

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