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IS claims responsibility for train attack in Germany
BERLIN: German police shot dead a 17-year-old Afghan refugee on Monday after he attacked train passengers with an axe and a knife, seriously wounding four.
BERLIN: German police shot dead a 17-year-old Afghan refugee on Monday after he attacked train passengers with an axe and a knife, seriously wounding four.
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility on Tuesday for the attack, but authorities said the assailant appears to have self-radicalised and had no direct link to the extremists.
Police found a hand-painted Islamic State flag and a text written partly in Pashto in the room of the teenager, a state minister said.
Several other people were injured in the assault on a regional train near the southern city of Wuerzburg, police said, adding the teenager was killed as he tried to flee.
Joachim Herrmann, the interior minister of Bavaria state, said the assailant had arrived as an unaccompanied minor in Germany and had lived at first in a shelter and then more recently with a foster family in nearby Ochsenfurt.
During the attack, he shouted “Allahuakbar ”( God is greatest ), said a ministry spokesperson.
However, he stressed the investigation was ongoing and that the teenager appeared to have acted alone.
The attack happened on a train between Treuchlingen and Wuerzburg in Bavaria.
Four people were seriously injured. Fourteen people were treated for shock.
An eyewitness who lives next to the railway station told DPA news agency that the train, which had been carrying around 25 people, looked “like a slaughterhouse” after the attack, with blood covering the floor. The man said he saw people crawl from the carriage.
