{"id":69914,"date":"2021-06-26T15:14:00","date_gmt":"2021-06-26T15:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/en.bornomalanews.com\/?p=69914"},"modified":"2021-06-26T15:14:00","modified_gmt":"2021-06-26T15:14:00","slug":"3-killed-5-seriously-injured-in-germany-knife-attack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/en.bornomalanews.com\/?p=69914","title":{"rendered":"3 killed, 5 seriously injured in Germany knife attack"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"News Desk:<\/strong> A Somali man killed three people and left five others seriously injured in an “incredibly brutal” knife rampage in the southern German city of Wuerzburg.<\/p>\n

The 24-year-old suspect staged the attack in the city centre at around 5 pm (1500 GMT), striking at a household goods store, before hitting a bank.<\/p>\n

The man, who has lived in Wuerzburg since 2015, was overpowered after police shot him in the thigh, said Bavaria's interior minister Joachim Herrmann.<\/p>\n

The rampage left “three dead, five seriously injured and others injured,” said Herrmann, adding, “it is not certain if the most seriously injured will survive”.<\/p>\n

Investigators have found documentation showing the man “was treated in a psychiatric institution”, said Herrmann, but added that he could not detail the length of the stay.<\/p>\n

“The police investigation will determine if this was an Islamist act or if it was due to the psychiatric state” of the man, he said.<\/p>\n

– ‘Allah Akbar' –<\/p>\n

A witness had reportedly said the suspect “shouted Allah Akbar” (God is greatest) during what rescuers described as a “really incredibly brutal” attack, said Herrmann.<\/p>\n

“That must all be clarified in further interrogations but we have no further indications on the motivations,” he added.<\/p>\n

Police said however that the suspect was not a known Islamist.<\/p>\n

The mass-circulation daily Bild published a photo of the suspect, showing a dark-skinned man wearing a beige, long-sleeved t-shirt with grey trousers and holding a long knife.<\/p>\n

Video footage circulating online also showed passers-by trying to stop the suspect using folded chairs.<\/p>\n

A crowd of people gave chase before a police car arrived on the scene, one video showed.<\/p>\n

Another photo published by Bild showed a police officer handcuffing the suspect.<\/p>\n

A huge police deployment was underway in the city of around 130,000 inhabitants located about 120 kilometres (75 miles) west of Frankfurt.<\/p>\n

While the perpetrator's motive has not yet been established, Germany has been on high alert after several deadly Islamist extremist attacks.<\/p>\n

– Dangerous suspects –<\/p>\n

Wuerzburg was itself hit five years ago by an axe-wielding man who seriously wounded four people o a train.<\/p>\n

The suspect, an Afghan, sought to attack a passerby as he fled before being shot dead by police.<\/p>\n

The attack was claimed by the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group.<\/p>\n

The deadliest Islamist attack in Germany happened in December 2016 when a jihadist rammed a truck into a Berlin Christmas market killing 12 people.<\/p>\n

The Tunisian attacker, a failed asylum-seeker, was an IS supporter.<\/p>\n

More recently, one man was killed and another seriously injured in a knife attack in the city of Dresden in October.<\/p>\n

A 20-year-old Syrian jihadist in May received a life sentence for the homophobic attack.<\/p>\n

Last August, six people were injured in a series of motorway accidents in Berlin in what prosecutors described as a suspected Islamist attack.<\/p>\n

Since 2009, German authorities have foiled 17 suspected jihadist attacks — the majority in 2016, according to the interior ministry.<\/p>\n

The number of Islamists considered dangerous in Germany rose sharply between 2015 and 2018, according to security services.<\/p>\n

But the numbers have declined since then, with 615 considered dangerous by the latest count compared with 730 in January 2018.<\/p>\n

There are also 521 people “who have attracted the attention of the security services but have not yet reached the stage of being considered dangerous”.<\/p>\n

In 2020, 320 new investigations with a link to the Islamist threat were launched in Germany.<\/p>\n

Germany remains a target for jihadist groups, in particular because of its involvement in the coalition fighting IS in Iraq and Syria, and its deployment in Afghanistan since 2001.<\/p>\n

The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has meanwhile charged that Chancellor Angela Merkel's decision to allow in more than one million asylum-seekers — many fleeing Iraq and Syria — since 2015 has contributed to the heightened security risk.<\/p>\n

But beyond Islamist attacks, there have been other knife assaults.<\/p>\n

In October 2017, a man randomly attacked passers-by with a knife in central Munich, lightly injuring eight people. Police excluded terrorism as a motive after detaining a suspect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

News Desk: A Somali man killed three people and left five others seriously injured in an “incredibly brutal” knife rampage in the southern German city of Wuerzburg. The 24-year-old suspect staged the attack in the city centre at around 5 pm (1500 GMT), striking at a household goods store, before hitting a bank. The man, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":69915,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2,14],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\n\n\t\n