Suspected German Festival Stabber Who Killed 3 Arrested

 

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

A person suspected of killing three people in the street party is arrested

A police spokesman told AFP that officers arrested a man during a raid at a hostel for asylum seekers, not far from the scene of Friday's attack. German police on Saturday arrested the suspected killer responsible for a shoulder attack that left three people dead at a street festival, an attack claimed by the Islamic State group. The unidentified gunman was on the run after Friday night in Solingen, in the west of the country, which sparked a manhunt that lasted all day.

"We have just arrested the real suspect," the interior minister of the North Rhine-Westphalia region, Herbert Reul, said on public television on Saturday evening.

The man we are looking for all day was recently in custody," he said, adding that the police had found evidence to convict him. In a statement on Telegram, ISIS's propaganda arm Amaq said "the perpetrator of the attack on a Christian gathering in the German city of Solingen was a soldier of the Islamic State."

IS said the attack was carried out as "revenge for Muslims in Palestine and elsewhere", in an apparent reference to Israel's war against the Palestinian group Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

This statement has not yet been verified. German officials had previously said that "a terrorist motive cannot be ruled out" for the act.

A police spokesman earlier told AFP that officers arrested a man during a raid at a hostel for asylum seekers, not far from the scene of Friday's attack. The prosecution announced on Saturday the arrest of the first person: a 15-year-old teenager suspected of not having reported a criminal offence.

Witnesses reportedly saw the teenager discussing the attack shortly before he appeared with a man who might have been the killer, said Markus Caspers, a prosecutor in Düsseldorf, west of Solingen.

The dead were 56- and 67-year-old men and a 56-year-old woman, authorities said.

"The victims were complete strangers and there was no known connection between them," Caspers said at a news conference.

Four of the injured were in "serious" condition, authorities said, revising an earlier estimate of five. Chancellor Olaf Scholz said the perpetrator "must be quickly arrested and punished."

The attacker struck as thousands of people gathered for the first night of a "Festival of Diversity", part of a series of events marking Solingen's 650th anniversary.

High terrorist alert

Germany is on alert for possible Islamic attacks after a series of atrocities.

Since the outbreak of war in Gaza on October 7, the risk of Islamist plots has "worsened significantly", said Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, warning that "the threat of Islamist terrorism remains high".

Jihadists have carried out several attacks in Germany in recent years, the deadliest being a truck attack on a Christmas market in Berlin in 2016 that left 12 dead. In May, a police officer was killed and five people injured in a knife attack at a far-right demonstration in Mannheim, with possible Islamic motivations.

Friday's killing spree began as thousands gathered outside a stage for the first night of the three-day festival.

A witness, Lars Breitzke, told the newspaper Solinger Tageblatt that he was a few meters from the attack, not far from the scene, and that he "knew from the expression on the singer's face that something was not right ".

"And then, three meters from me, a person fell," said Breitzke, who initially thought it was someone who had had too much to drink.

When he turned around, he saw other people lying on the ground in pools of blood. The mayor of Solingen, Tim-Oliver Kurzbach, said the entire town was "shocked, horrified and deeply saddened".

Faeser asked the country to "stand united" and denounced "those who want to incite hatred" during a visit to the scene of the tragedy. "We will not let them be separated," he said.

Series of daggers

Solingen is a city of about 150,000 inhabitants located between Düsseldorf and Cologne.

Up to 75,000 visitors are expected at the Festival of Diversity. After the attack, "people left the stage defeated but calm," Philipp Mueller, one of the organizers, told the newspaper, adding that the rest of the festival was canceled.

Scholz's center-left coalition will go to regional elections next week in the east of the country, where the far-right AfD is leading in the polls.

Germany accepted more than one million asylum seekers in 2015-2016, at the height of Europe's migration crisis.