Arrest after knife attack in Germany

Photo: Roberto Pfeil Agence France-Presse A major police operation is underway in Germany to find the suspect in the knife attack and clarify his motives.

Roberto Pfeil – Agence France-Presse and Sophie Makris – Agence France-Presse in Solingen and Berlin respectively

Published and updated on August 24

• Europe

German police are continuing their active search Saturday for the perpetrator of the deadly knife attack committed the day before at a festival in Solingen, in the west of the country, and are not ruling out a terrorist motive for the act that shocked Germany.

Police announced the arrest of a 15-year-old boy earlier in the day on suspicion of “failure to report” a criminal act.

Witnesses reported seeing him, shortly before the incident, discussing the attack with a man who could be the killer, said Düsseldorf's chief prosecutor, Markus Caspers.

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

“It was a very targeted attack on the neck” of the victims, noted local police chief Thorsten Fleiss after analyzing initial images. Investigators said they have video footage of the attack.

“We have not been able to identify a motive so far, but we assume, in view of all the circumstances, that the initial suspicion of a terrorist-motivated act cannot be ruled out,” the prosecutor said.

“No other motive is evident at this time,” he added.

Stay united

At the end of the day, German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser visited Solingen, calling on the country to “stay united” in the face of this “horrible attack.”

“Let's not let ourselves be divided,” she said, while denouncing “those who want to sow hatred.”

The far-right AfD party, in particular, blamed supposed shortcomings in security policy at the regional and federal levels after the attack.

The coalition of Social Democratic Chancellor Olaf Scholz faces key regional elections in the east of the country in a week, where the AfD is far ahead of the government parties in the polls.

“The culprit must be arrested quickly and punished to the full extent of the law,” urged German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who said he was “devastated,” on the X network.

Thousands of spectators gathered in front of a stage set up in the centre of Solingen, a town of some 160,000 people, for the launch of several days of festivities.

Police have urged caution over the motives and physical description of the attacker.

In late July in the United Kingdom, a knife attack in which three young girls were killed led to several days of riots, fuelled in part by false information about the identity of the attacker.

The event was intended to celebrate the 650th anniversary of this city in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia and its cultural diversity. The festivities, originally scheduled to run until Sunday, have been cancelled.

“We are all in a state of shock, horror and great sadness,” wrote the mayor of this Ruhr area municipality, Tim-Oliver Kurzbach.

Pools of blood

A witness told the local daily Solinger Tageblatthaving found himself a few meters from the attack, not far from the stage, “understanding from the expression on the singer's face that something was wrong.”

“And then, a meter from me, a person fell,” says this man, Lars Breitzke. When he turned around, he saw people lying on the ground and several pools of blood.

Investigators, searching for the murderer's weapon, seized several knives around the crime scene.

The German authorities have been on high alert in recent years in the face of a dual terrorist threat, jihadism and right-wing extremism.

In August, the Minister of the Interior announced that she wanted to ban knives longer than 6 centimeters from public spaces, with some members of the government coalition even calling for a total ban, in the face of a resurgence of knife attacks.

The deadliest jihadist attack on German soil dates back to December 2016: a truck attack claimed by the Islamic State group left 12 dead at a Christmas market in the centre of Berlin.

Another threat weighs on the country, embodied by the extreme right, after several deadly attacks in recent years targeting community or religious sites.