AFPForensic experts from the police are investigating in Solingen
NOS News•yesterday, 23:20•Adjusted today, 06:35
At least three people were killed in a knife attack in the German city of Solingen last night. In addition, eight people were injured in the attack, five of them seriously, according to German police. The fatalities include two men and a woman, reports news agency DPA.
According to Bild stabbed a man around him on a square at a city festival in the West German city, celebrating the 650th anniversary of Solingen. He allegedly stabbed his victims in the throats. The perpetrator fled, after which the police started a manhunt. That is still going on this morning.
Special units from all over the state of North Rhine-Westphalia came to Solingen. The police assume one perpetrator and say they have no clear description of the fugitive.
The police and emergency services are present in large numbers in the city:
Multiple dead in knife attack in Solingen
North Rhine-Westphalia’s Interior Minister Herbert Reul visited the scene of the knife attack late in the evening. He warned against speculation about the perpetrator. “Out of nowhere, someone is randomly stabbing people. We can’t say anything about the person or the motive yet.”
Tim Kurzbach, the mayor of Solingen, writes in a press release that he is “in shock”. “We wanted to celebrate our city anniversary together, and now we have to mourn the dead and wounded. It breaks my heart that an attack has taken place on our city,” said Kurzbach, who said he was praying “for all those who are still fighting for their lives”.
All festivities for the city jubilee, which were to be celebrated until Sunday, have now been cancelled. The mayor of Gouda, Pieter Verhoeve, was also present at the jubilee party in Solingen last night, together with two aldermen. He writes on X that the Gouda delegation is “safely accommodated in the hotel”. Gouda is a sister city of Solingen.
‘Suddenly someone fell down next to me’
Authorities are asking residents to avoid the city center. The incident took place on Fronhof Square, where a band was performing at the time. An eyewitness told Solinger Tageblatt that he could see from the singer’s face that something was wrong at around 9:45 p.m.
“And then someone suddenly fell down a meter from me,” Lars Breitzke told the local newspaper. At first he thought it was a drunk person, but when he turned around he saw more people lying on the ground in pools of blood.
Shortly after 10 p.m., a concert by famous German DJ Topic on another square in the city, the Neumarkt, was stopped because of the incident. The thousands of visitors were asked to leave the square quietly. The DJ later wrote on his Instagram page that he had been asked by security personnel to continue playing after the knife attack, in order to prevent mass panic. “That was incredibly difficult,” Topic said.
Solingen is located south of the Ruhr area, near Düsseldorf and about a hundred kilometres east of Roermond.
In early June, Germany was also shocked by a knife attack. At that time, a man stabbed people at an anti-Islam rally in the center of Mannheim. A police officer was killed in that attack, who was stabbed when he tried to stop the attacker. It later became clear that the knife attacker had radical Islamic motives.
