German stabbing kills three, official says may have been terrorism Reuters

By Petra Wischgoll, Tom Sims and Thomas Seythal

SOLINGEN, Germany (Reuters) – A stabbing incident in which a man killed three people and injured eight at a party in the western German city of Solingen may have been an act of terrorism, an official said on Saturday.

Police are looking for the suspect, who was still at large after the incident on Friday evening. They said they arrested a 15-year-old person and are investigating whether this person had any connection with the attacker.

Markus Caspers, an official at the public prosecutor's office in Duesseldorf, said that terrorism cannot be ruled out because there are no other known reasons and because the victims appear to be unrelated.

The chief of police, Thorsten Fleiss, in this press conference on Saturday afternoon, said that the victim seemed to want to abort the trachea.

Interior minister Nancy Faeser said security authorities were doing everything they could to catch the attacker and investigate the attack, which took place in the Fronhof, a marketplace in Solingen where bands were playing.

The city was celebrating its 650th anniversary in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, which borders the Netherlands.

“The perpetrator must be caught immediately and punished to the full extent of the law,” said Chancellor Olaf Scholz on the X website.

The police blocked the scene on Saturday and passers-by placed candles and flowers freely.

“We are full of shock and grief,” Solingen Mayor Tim-Oliver Kurzbach told reporters.

The German singer who goes by the name Topic said he was playing on a nearby stage when the incident happened. He was told what happened but was asked to continue playing “to avoid attacking too many people,” he wrote on Instagram.

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

Authorities have canceled the rest of the weekend festival.

Fatal stabbings and shootings are not uncommon in Germany. The government said earlier this month it wants to tighten laws on knives that can be carried in public by reducing the length allowed.

In June, a 29-year-old police officer died after being stabbed in Mannheim during an attack on a right-wing protest. A stabbing attack on a train in 2021 injured several.

The interior minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, Herbert Reul, visited the scene of the incident in Solingen on Saturday morning. He told reporters that the attack was aimed at human life but refused to speculate on the motive.

Solingen, best known for its knife manufacturing industry, is a city of about 165,000 people.

The episode comes ahead of three state elections next month in Thuringia, Saxony and Brandenburg, where the far-right opposition Alternative for Germany (AfD) has a chance of winning.

Although the motive and the identity of the attacker are unknown, the AfD's chief executive for state elections, Bjoern Hoecke, seized on Friday's incident, posting on X: “Do you really want to get used to this? Free yourself and end this madness of forced multiculturalism”.