“People hit at random”, who is the wanted man –

Attack in Germany. Three people were killed and four were seriously injured in a knife attack last night during a town festival in Solingen, western Germany. The man, armed with a knife, began to stab the crowd and then ran away after being wounded by police. The announcement, in a festive atmosphere for the celebration of the “Festival of Diversity” for the 650th anniversary of the city in North Rhine-Westphalia, was made by the organizers, on stage, in front of a stunned audience unaware of what had happened. A “major operation” is currently underway to try to find the alleged perpetrator, a Dusseldorf police spokesman told AFP.

German police have no longer classified the attack as a ‘murderous rampage’ but as an act of terrorism, Bild reported. There is still no identikit and “we currently have no clues as to the whereabouts” of the attacker, the police reported, urging citizens who notice anything suspicious not to act on their own, but to call the emergency number. The attacker, as explained by a spokesperson for the North Rhine-Westphalia Interior Ministry, managed to escape by taking advantage of the panic generated by the knife attack and is still on the run. According to the DPA agency, special units are also participating in the search.

“The attacker stabbed people at random with a knife,” Alexander Kresta, spokesman for the Wuppertal police, told the Bild tabloid. The suspects are a man who was probably Arab, and the police are not ruling out a terrorist motive. After the attack, the scene was “largely cordoned off,” and the Festival, which was supposed to last until Sunday, was interrupted.

The victims are said to be a woman and two men. All three are said to be from the same town and Dusseldorf. There are said to be several injured, 4 of whom are in serious condition.

Around 75,000 people were expected at the event. “Tonight we are all in a state of shock, horror and great sadness in Solingen. We all wanted to celebrate the anniversary of our city together and now we have dead and injured to mourn,” Mayor Tim-Oliver Kurzbach wrote on the city’s website. Solingen, a city with more than 150,000 inhabitants, is located not far from Dusseldorf and north of Cologne.

According to the reconstruction made by the local newspaper Solinger Tageblatt, shortly after 10 p.m., a member of the organization went on stage to interrupt the demonstration that began in the evening with a light show accompanied by concerts in a town square. The organizer said that rescuers were trying to save the lives of several people. The thousands of visitors followed his call to leave the premises peacefully, the newspaper reported. “The atmosphere is eerie,” described the journalist who covered the event. “People left the square shocked, but calmly,” Philipp Muller, one of the organizers, testified to the newspaper. A witness also told the Solinger Tageblatt that he was a few meters from the attack, not far from the concert stage, “and could tell from the expression on the singer’s face that something was wrong.” “And then, a meter away from me, a person fell,” the man said, explaining that he initially thought it was a drunk person.

In recent years, German authorities have remained on high alert in the face of the dual terrorist threat of jihadism and right-wing extremism. The deadliest jihadist attack on German soil occurred in December 2016, when a truck-ram attack claimed by the Islamic State group killed 12 people at a Christmas market in central Berlin. At the end of May, a knife attack in Mannheim against an anti-Islamic demonstration was carried out by a 25-year-old Afghan who had arrived in Germany in 2014. The attack killed a police officer and injured five others.