Germany Train Axe Attack by Teenage Refugee
Germany Train Axe Attack by Teenage Refugee
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BAVARIA - A man armed with an axe has attacked around 20 passengers on a train in northern Bavaria on Monday evening.
According to local police, three people were seriously injured and one person sustained light injuries before the attacker was shot by police.
According to Bavaria’s interior minister, Joachim Herrmann, the attacker was a 17 year old Afghan asylum seeker, who had arrived in Germany as an unaccompanied minor.
After passengers managed to alert the driver, the train was stopped in the Heidingsfeld district of Würzburg, and the attacker had initially managed to flee from the carriage on foot, Herrmann said.
A police task force that happened to be in the vicinity had then pursued the attacker, shooting the 17 year old who had been carrying an axe and a knife, when he had attacked members of the unit.
Asked whether the attack had had an Islamist background, Herrmann said there had been a report by one of the witnesses inside the train, which was still being investigated.
According to initial reports, the attacker had previously been living with a foster family in Ochsenfurt, a town roughly 20 kilometres south of Würzburg.
The man reportedly attacked passengers on a regional train travelling between the town of Treuchtlingen and the city of Würzburg. Fourteen other passengers were reportedly in a state of shock and receiving treatment by specialists.
The interior ministry could not confirm that some of the victims were not in a life-threating situation.
A man attacked passengers with “cutting and stabbing weapons”, the Bayerischer Rundfunk quoted police as saying.
The train line between Ochsenfurt and Würzburg remains closed while police investigations are ongoing. Police initially said there was as yet no indication of a motive, and they were treating the attacker as a lone individual, citing witness reports.
Germany, which has been at the heart of the refugee crisis over the last year, has not seen any attacks with an expressed terrorist motive. In November last year, a football friendly between Germany and Holland in Hanover was cancelled after a terrorist attack tip-off, with interior minister Thomas de Maiziére saying there had been a “concrete threat” of an attack.
In the aftermath of the terrorist attack in Brussels in March, German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier had appealed to citizens to keep a “cool head”: “The terrorists would like to carry their war into our cities and into our heads, to create a kind of permanent siege, to force their perverse logic of violence and hatred on us”, the social democrat politician had said. “We would do our best not to play along with this game”.
1.2 million refugees are currently estimated to be living in Germany. Latest estimates by the EU commission put the number of asylum seekers in Europe by the end of 2017 at around three million.
According to a study published in April by Germany’s Friedrich Ebert Foundation thinktank, around 154,000 Afghan citizens migrated to Germany in 2015, of whom 32,000 applied for asylum. More than 120,000 Afghan citizens remain in Germany illegally or have moved on to other countries, according to the study.
The study found that the majority of Afghan migrants were young and male. The majority of family members who were interviewed for the survey said they had fled their country because of the economic situation. Political developments in Europe or German chancellor Angela Merkel’s open-border policy at the height of the refugee crisis had only played a minor role in encouraging Afghans to leave their country, the study found.
Germany, while initially generally welcoming refugees, has since begun to take a much tougher line, for example, declaring it will deport Afghan asylum seekers whose applications are rejected.
Earlier in the year Afghans were the second largest group entering the European Union. 178,230 Afghans sought asylum in the 28 states of the EU in 2015.
According to local police, three people were seriously injured and one person sustained light injuries before the attacker was shot by police.
According to Bavaria’s interior minister, Joachim Herrmann, the attacker was a 17 year old Afghan asylum seeker, who had arrived in Germany as an unaccompanied minor.
After passengers managed to alert the driver, the train was stopped in the Heidingsfeld district of Würzburg, and the attacker had initially managed to flee from the carriage on foot, Herrmann said.
A police task force that happened to be in the vicinity had then pursued the attacker, shooting the 17 year old who had been carrying an axe and a knife, when he had attacked members of the unit.
Asked whether the attack had had an Islamist background, Herrmann said there had been a report by one of the witnesses inside the train, which was still being investigated.
According to initial reports, the attacker had previously been living with a foster family in Ochsenfurt, a town roughly 20 kilometres south of Würzburg.
The man reportedly attacked passengers on a regional train travelling between the town of Treuchtlingen and the city of Würzburg. Fourteen other passengers were reportedly in a state of shock and receiving treatment by specialists.
The interior ministry could not confirm that some of the victims were not in a life-threating situation.
A man attacked passengers with “cutting and stabbing weapons”, the Bayerischer Rundfunk quoted police as saying.
The train line between Ochsenfurt and Würzburg remains closed while police investigations are ongoing. Police initially said there was as yet no indication of a motive, and they were treating the attacker as a lone individual, citing witness reports.
Germany, which has been at the heart of the refugee crisis over the last year, has not seen any attacks with an expressed terrorist motive. In November last year, a football friendly between Germany and Holland in Hanover was cancelled after a terrorist attack tip-off, with interior minister Thomas de Maiziére saying there had been a “concrete threat” of an attack.
In the aftermath of the terrorist attack in Brussels in March, German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier had appealed to citizens to keep a “cool head”: “The terrorists would like to carry their war into our cities and into our heads, to create a kind of permanent siege, to force their perverse logic of violence and hatred on us”, the social democrat politician had said. “We would do our best not to play along with this game”.
1.2 million refugees are currently estimated to be living in Germany. Latest estimates by the EU commission put the number of asylum seekers in Europe by the end of 2017 at around three million.
According to a study published in April by Germany’s Friedrich Ebert Foundation thinktank, around 154,000 Afghan citizens migrated to Germany in 2015, of whom 32,000 applied for asylum. More than 120,000 Afghan citizens remain in Germany illegally or have moved on to other countries, according to the study.
The study found that the majority of Afghan migrants were young and male. The majority of family members who were interviewed for the survey said they had fled their country because of the economic situation. Political developments in Europe or German chancellor Angela Merkel’s open-border policy at the height of the refugee crisis had only played a minor role in encouraging Afghans to leave their country, the study found.
Germany, while initially generally welcoming refugees, has since begun to take a much tougher line, for example, declaring it will deport Afghan asylum seekers whose applications are rejected.
Earlier in the year Afghans were the second largest group entering the European Union. 178,230 Afghans sought asylum in the 28 states of the EU in 2015.
(rnz)
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