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A knife-wielding attacker killed three people and seriously injured at least five others at a festival in the western German city of Solingen late Friday, according to German authorities.
Around 9:30 p.m., witnesses alerted police that an unidentified attacker had indiscriminately injured several people with a knife in Fraunhofer Central Square. Police said the attacker is currently at large and they currently have little information about the man.
They said they believed the stabbing was carried out by a lone assailant.
Philipp Müller, one of the festival organisers, took to the stage and called on festival goers to “remain calm and keep your eyes open because unfortunately the perpetrators have not yet been caught”.
He said many people were killed by “knife-wielding men”.
There was at least one helicopter in the air, and there were numerous police cars and emergency vehicles on the road with blue lights flashing, with several streets blocked off.
Police put the number of serious injuries at five. The region’s top security official, Herbert Ruhl, who visited the scene early Saturday, put the number at six.
North Rhine-Westphalia Interior Minister Ludwig von der Lehr said: “We don’t know why the attack happened.”
He said: “I can’t judge the attacker’s motive at this time,” and it was not clear who the attacker was, but the attacker left the scene “relatively quickly.”
“Everyone in Solingen is in shock tonight. We all wanted to celebrate the city’s anniversary together, but now we have to mourn the dead and injured,” Mayor Tim Kutzbach said in a Facebook post.
He added: “It breaks my heart that our city has been attacked.”
“The atmosphere was eerie,” local newspaper Solinger Tageblatt quoted journalist Celine Delicatz, who was covering the festival, as saying. She said the party atmosphere turned alarming within minutes and she saw festival goers crying.
The “Multicultural Festival”, which marks the city’s 650th anniversary, opened on Friday and was due to run until Sunday, with live music, cabaret and acrobatics on stages along the central streets.
After the attack, the city of Solingen, which has about 160,000 inhabitants and is located near larger cities such as Cologne and Düsseldorf, cancelled the rest of its festival.
There have been concerns recently about a rise in knife violence in Germany.
In May, an Afghan immigrant stabbed members of a group that claimed to oppose “political Islam,” killing a police officer.
Germany’s top security official, Interior Minister Nancy Fesser, has proposed tightening weapons laws to allow only knives with blades no longer than 6 centimeters (nearly 2.4 inches) to be carried in public, compared with the current 12 centimeters (4.7 inches) allowed.
(Associated Press)
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