What happened?
The attack took place at a community festival in Solingen, in the west of the country. Several thousand people gathered to celebrate the 650th anniversary of this city in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Dubbed the “festival of diversity,” the event was slated to run all weekend.
According to the regional Minister of the Interior Herbert Reul, at around 21.40, in front of one of the stages set up for this occasion, a man “came out of nowhere and armed with a knife stabbed people at random and killed them”, before running away.
Police report three dead and eight injured, five of them seriously.
According to local daily “Solinger Tageblatt”, a member of the organization went on stage to interrupt the concert shortly after 10 p.m., explaining that people had been attacked with knives and asking the audience to leave the venue.
A witness also told the “Solinger Tageblatt” that he was a few meters from the attack, not far from the scene, “understood from the expression on the singer's face that something was wrong”.
“And then, a meter away from me, a person fell,” said this man, Lars Breitzke, who then saw several people lying on the ground, as well as pools of blood.
Who is the attacker?
For now, neither the identity nor the motivations of the attacker are known. The man ran away and is still being sought. “We can't say anything at the moment about the motive, about the person,” Herbert Reul said, urging caution about the nature of the attack.
German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, for her part, speaks of a “brutal attack” and assures that investigators are trying to “determine the context”.
Where is the tracking?
“Victims and witnesses are currently being interviewed,” police said early this morning. Investigators also asked the public to come forward with any information, including photos and videos, to help with the search.
In addition, many streets in the center of Solingen, a city located not far from Düsseldorf and north of Cologne, are closed this Saturday morning.
In what context does this attack take place?
German authorities have been on high alert in recent years in the face of a twin terrorist threat, jihadism and right-wing extremism.
In August, the interior minister announced he wanted to ban knives measuring more than six centimeters from public spaces, with some members of the ruling coalition even calling for a total ban in the face of a rise in stabbing attacks.
Social Democrat Olaf Scholz's coalition faces key regional elections in the east of the country in a week's time, where the far-right AfD is well ahead of the ruling parties.
The deadliest jihadist attack on German soil dates back to December 2016: a ram truck attack claimed by the Islamic State group killed 12 at a Christmas market in central Berlin.