Isis claims responsibility for German festival ‘terror attack’

Police and ambulances near the scene of the knife attack in Germany. Photo / Getty Images

Isis (Islamic State) on Sunday morning (NZT) claimed responsibility for an attack on festival goers in the German city of Solingen, in which a knifeman killed three people and wounded eight others in a stabbing rampage.

Authorities were last night still hunting for the suspect, who deliberately cut at his victims’ throats according to police.

In a statement on its official mouthpiece Amaq, Isis said the attack targeted a gathering of Christians for “the cause of Palestinians and Muslims”.

Minister-president of the German state of North Rhine Westphalia Hendrik Wust described the attack as “an act of terror against the security and freedom of this country”.

Police and ambulances near the scene of the knife attack in Germany. Photo / Getty Images

But German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, the country’s top security official, has not classified it as a terror attack.

Police arrested a 15-year-old boy in connection to the case after he was allegedly heard talking to the suspect ahead of the brutal attack. The youth is accused of failing to report a planned crime.

German police are continuing a manhunt for the assailant who allegedly targeted his victims’ necks.

Police have not ruled out terrorism as the motive behind the death of two men, aged 67 and 56, and a woman, 56. Five of the eight people wounded in the attack are in serious condition, police said at a press conference.

Officers said they had reviewed social media footage of the bloody attack and that the killer could also face eight charges of attempted murder.

“After evaluating the initial images, we are assuming that it was a very targeted attack on the neck,” said Thorsten Fleiss, the police director at the press conference.

Markus Caspers, the chief public prosecutor, said investigators currently see no other motive than terrorism.

The perpetrator aimed specifically for peoples’ throats, one police spokesman said. Photo / Getty Images

Caspers said two witnesses had overheard a conversation between the youth, who was arrested on Saturday morning, and another person shortly before the stabbings.

It is unclear if the other person was the suspect but police acted after the witnesses reported what they had heard to investigators.

Police also said they were preparing a description of the attacker to be released to the public.

Officers have seized several knives and are investigating whether any are the murder weapon. The Bild newspaper reported the murder weapon had been found about 200m from where the attack took place.

Police said the situation was fluid and they were chasing “many leads”.

Dusseldorf Police said: “various police measures, including searches at various locations, are being carried out in parallel”.

“Investigations and searches for possible further perpetrators and reasons for the offence are in full swing.”

Despite the killer still being at large, Markus Rohrl, the Wuppertal police chief, said he would not recommend the public locking themselves up at home.

“Everyone has to decide for themselves whether they go to festivities, whether they go to football matches, whether they use public transport. The consequence of saying no to all of this would be that they would have to lock themselves in their homes. I can’t recommend that to anyone. Quite the opposite,” he said.

“Both victims and witnesses are currently being questioned. The police are currently searching for the perpetrator with a large team,” police said earlier.

The incident occurred at about 9.40pm local time .

Olaf Scholz, the German Chancellor, said on X: “the perpetrator must be quickly caught and punished to the fullest extent of the law”.

Faeser said earlier that security authorities were doing everything they could to catch the perpetrator and investigate the background of the attack.

The attack occurred at the Fronhof, a market square in Solingen where live bands were playing. It was during a festival marking the 650th anniversary of the city in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, which borders the Netherlands.

A German musician, who goes by the name Topic, said he was playing on a nearby stage when the incident occurred. He was told about what happened but was asked to continue “to avoid causing a mass panic attack”, he posted on Instagram.

He was eventually told to stop, and “since the attacker was still on the run, we hid in a nearby store while police helicopters circled above us”, Topic wrote.

Authorities cancelled the remainder of the weekend festival.

The perpetrator aimed specifically for peoples’ throats, one police spokesman said. A second spokesman later would not confirm or deny that detail and pointed to a news conference scheduled for the afternoon.

Fatal stabbings and shootings are relatively uncommon in Germany. The Government said this month it wanted to toughen rules on knives that can be carried in public by reducing the maximum length allowed.

In June, a 29-year-old policeman died after being stabbed in Mannheim during an attack at a right-wing demonstration. A stabbing attack on a train in 2021 injured several people.

Herbert Reul, the Interior Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, visited the scene. He told reporters it was a targeted attack on human life but declined to speculate on the motive.