German police hunt suspect as IS claims festival knife attack

SOLINGEN, Germany: German police Saturday hunted a man who stabbed three people to death at a street festival in an attack claimed by the Islamic State group as “revenge for Muslims in Palestine and everywhere”.

The unidentified knifeman went on a rampage in the western town of Solingen late on Friday, as thousands had gathered for the first night of a “Festival of Diversity”, part of a series of events to mark the town’s 650th anniversary.

In a statement on Telegram, IS’s Amaq news agency said that “the perpetrator of the attack on a gathering of Christians in the city of Solingen in Germany yesterday was a soldier of the Islamic State” group. IS said the attack was carried out as “revenge for Muslims in Palestine and everywhere”, in an apparent reference to Israel’s war with Palestinian militant group Hamas in the Gaza Strip. German officials had earlier said that “a terrorist motive cannot be excluded” for the act. On Saturday, police announced they had detained a person as part of the probe, with a prosecutor later saying it was a 15-year-old suspected of failing to report a criminal act.Witnesses had allegedly seen the teen discussing the attack just before it happened with a man who could be the knifeman, said Markus Caspers, prosecutor of Duesseldorf which lies just west of Solingen.

The people killed were men of 56 and 67 years of age and a 56-year-old woman, officials said.

“The victims were completely unknown with no known ties between them,” Caspers told a press conference. Four of the wounded were in a “serious” condition, officials said, revising down an earlier estimate of five. “After analysing the first images, we’re going on the principle that it was an attack targeted toward the neck,” police chief Thorsten Fleiss told the press conference.

Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said Germany’s “security authorities are doing everything they can to catch the perpetrator” of the “horrific act”, while Chancellor Olaf Scholz said he “must be caught quickly and punished”. Thousands of people had gathered in front of a stage on the festival’s first night when the killing started. “Out of nowhere, a man armed with a knife stabbed people at random and killed them,” regional interior minister Herbert Reul said in comments at the scene. Solingen mayor Tim-Oliver Kurzbach said the whole city was in “shock, horror and great grief”. “We all wanted to celebrate our town’s anniversary together and now we have to mourn the dead and injured,” he said.