BERLIN — A knife-wielding man described as a stateless Palestinian fatally stabbed two people and injured seven others on a train in northern Germany before he was grabbed by passengers and arrested by police, officials said. The motive for Wednesday’s attack was initially unknown.
Federal police said the suspect attacked several passengers with a knife shortly before the arrival of a regional train from Kiel to Hamburg at Brokstedt station.
Police spokesman Jürgen Henningsen from the nearby town of Flensburg said two of the stabbed people died after the attack. Three were seriously injured and four others were slightly injured. No information was given on the identity of the victims.
The attacker was also injured and taken to the hospital, police said.
Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser was shocked by the brutal attack.
“The knife attack on a regional train is shocking news. All our thoughts are with the victims of this horrible act and their families,” she said.
“The background to the fact is now being determined at high pressure,” added Faeser. “I want to sincerely thank the police and emergency services who responded.”
Authorities said they first became aware of the incident just before 3pm when several passengers on the train made emergency calls to police. Police said the train was stopped and the attacker was held outside the train after several passengers held him until officers arrived to arrest him.
The interior minister of Schleswig-Holstein, Sabine Sütterlin-Waack, condemned the attack.
“It’s terrible,” Sütterlin-Waack told NDR. “We are shocked and appalled that something like this has happened.”
She later told the dpa that the attacker was a stateless 33-year-old Palestinian.
The state police and the federal police were on site, the public prosecutor’s office is investigating the attack, the NDR reported.
There were about 120 passengers on the train at the time of the attack, dpa reported. About 70 of them were questioned by police at a nearby restaurant after the incident. Several forensics teams were also on site, investigators in white protective suits worked near the tracks and the train station.
Others walked across the platform with cameras, next to which the regional train “RE70 Hamburg Hbf”, in which the attack took place, was stopped. A bakery a few meters from the train station provided rescue workers and passengers with hot drinks and baked goods, dpa reported.
The train station in Brokstedt was closed for several hours and train traffic was delayed throughout northern Germany.
The railway operator Deutsche Bahn expressed his condolences on Wednesday evening and said: “Our deepest sympathy goes to the relatives of the victims. We wish the injured a speedy and full recovery.”