Police said a search was underway for an unidentified assailant following an attack on festival-goers that left eight people injured.
German police are searching for an unidentified suspect behind a mass stabbing attack that left three people dead at a festival in the western city of Solingen.
Police said eight people were injured, five of them seriously, on Saturday as thousands gathered in the central square to celebrate Solingen’s 650th anniversary. The dead included one woman and two men.
“Both the victim and witnesses are currently being questioned,” police in the nearby city of Duesseldorf said in a statement early on Saturday, adding that a “large number of officers are searching for the perpetrators.”
Police said an unidentified man attacked several people with a knife at around 9.40pm (19:40 GMT) on Friday.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Saturday that the perpetrators should be arrested immediately and face the full extent of the law.
The attack took place at a diversity festival in Solingen, Germany’s most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia, which borders the Netherlands.
The event was due to run until Sunday, with several stages in the city center offering attractions such as live music, cabaret and acrobatics. Solingen has a population of about 160,000 and is near larger cities such as Cologne and Duesseldorf.
“The brutal attack on a festival in the city of Solingen has deeply shocked us,” Interior Minister Nancy Faser said.
“Our country’s security agencies are doing everything in their power to catch the perpetrators of this horrific act,” she said in a statement on social media platform X on Saturday.
Police on Saturday warned residents who notice anything suspicious not to act on their own but to call the police emergency number.
“Currently we have no leads as to his whereabouts,” a police spokesman said. No description of the suspect has been released, Germany’s DPA news agency reported.
North Rhine-Westphalia state Interior Minister Herbert Reul visited the scene early Saturday and told reporters it was an attack on human life, but declined to speculate on a motive.
Fatal stabbings and shootings are relatively rare in Germany, although a knife attack at a far-right rally in Mannheim in May left one police officer dead and five injured.
Feiser recently proposed tightening weapons regulations so that only knives with blades up to 6cm (2.4 inches) long could be carried in public, instead of the 12cm (4.7 inches) currently permitted.
Eyewitness Lars Breitske, who was just metres from the attack and not far from the festival’s stage, told local newspaper Sollinger Tageblatt that “I could tell from the singer’s expression that something was wrong.”
“Then, a metre away from me, someone collapses,” said Breitzke, who at first thought it was someone who had had too much to drink.
I turned around and saw other people lying on the ground in a pool of blood.
“My heart is broken by the attack on our city and tears come to my eyes when I think of those who lost their lives,” Solingen Mayor Tim Oliver Kurtzbach said in a statement. “My prayers go out to those who are still fighting for their lives.”
“Tonight in Solingen we are all facing shock, horror and deep sadness. We all wanted to celebrate our city’s anniversary together but now we must mourn those who were killed and injured,” Kurtzbach wrote.
