3 victims. ISIS claims responsibility –

ISIS claimed responsibility for the knife attack that took place on Friday evening around 9:30 p.m. during celebrations for the 650th anniversary of Solingen, a city of 160,000 inhabitants in North Rhine-Westphalia. “Revenge for Muslims in Palestine and everywhere” is the message conveyed by the Islamic State, which described the attacker as one of its “soldiers”. Three people died: a 67-year-old man and a 56-year-old man and woman. Eight were injured, four of them in life-threatening conditions. They were shot while attending a concert. DJ and record producer Tobias Topic said on social media that, during his performance, security personnel asked him to continue playing to avoid panic among the crowd.

According to information from Bild, the attacker is a man in his 20s or 30s, 1.70-1.75 meters tall, with Arab features, athletic build, a short, thick beard, dressed in black with a cap. In the evening, the German police special forces (Sek) raided a refugee center about 300 meters from the site of the attack and 150 meters from where the knife used in the attack was found. A suspect has reportedly been arrested. A witness, speaking to the police, said he heard the attacker shout ‘Allah Akhbar’ while he was attacking. In the meantime, a 15-year-old has been arrested, who is said to have known about the attack and is accused of not reporting it. Witnesses have reportedly overheard a conversation between the young man and another person shortly before the attack in which they spoke of a possible knife attack. According to Der Spiegel, the 15-year-old is Kyrgyz and may have been the one who provided the information that convinced the police to raid the migrant shelter.

“Germans, Thuringians, do you really want to get used to this? Free yourselves, put an end once and for all to the wrong path of forced multiculturalism,” commented the leader of the AfD in Thuringia, Bjorn Hoecke, calling for a “turning point” on September 1, when elections will be held in Saxony and Thuringia. A message that is the opposite of that of President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who called for people to remain “united, against hatred and violence”. The entire political class said it was shocked by what happened. Chancellor Olaf Scholz called for the person responsible to be caught “quickly and punished to the fullest extent of the law”, as did the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, who stressed the “need to quickly clarify the background to this crime”.