By Tom Sims and Rene Wagner
FRANKFURT (Reuters) -Police hunted on Saturday for an unknown assailant hours after he killed three individuals and wounded others in a stabbing assault at a pageant within the western German metropolis of Solingen.
Eight had been injured, 5 of them severely, the police mentioned in an announcement early on Saturday. That was up from the 4 severe accidents the police reported earlier.
“Both victims and witnesses are currently being questioned. The police are currently searching for the perpetrator with a large team,” police mentioned.
The incident occurred round 9:40 p.m. (1940 GMT) on Friday, when the person attacked a number of individuals with a knife, the police mentioned.
The perpetrator aimed particularly for individuals’s throats, the police added. They may not present additional particulars or a motive.
“Our security authorities are doing everything they can to catch the perpetrator and investigate the background of the attack,” Germany’s inside minister, Nancy Faeser, mentioned in a publish on X.
The assault occurred on the Fronhof, a market sq. in Solingen the place dwell bands had been enjoying. It was throughout a pageant marking the 650th anniversary of town within the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, which borders the Netherlands.
The German musician who goes by the identify Subject mentioned he was enjoying on a close-by stage when the incident occurred. He was instructed about what occurred however was requested to proceed “to avoid causing a mass panic attack”, he posted on Instagram.
He was finally instructed to cease, and “since the attacker was still on the run, we hid in a nearby store while police helicopters circled above us,” Subject wrote.
Authorities cancelled the rest of the weekend pageant.
Deadly stabbings and shootings are comparatively unusual in Germany. The federal government mentioned earlier this month it needed to toughen guidelines on knives that may be carried in public by decreasing the utmost size allowed.
In June, a 29-year-old policeman died after being stabbed in Mannheim throughout an assault on a right-wing demonstration. A stabbing assault on a practice in 2021 injured a number of.
North Rhine-Westphalia’s inside minister, Herbert Reul, visited the scene early on Saturday. He instructed reporters it was a focused assault on human life however declined to take a position on the motive.
