Police officers stand beside a train in Wuerzburg, southern Germany, Monday evening, July 18, 2016, after a 17-year-old Afghan armed with an ax and a knife attacked passengers aboard a regional train in southern Ger.
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The IS-linked news agency Amaq said the attack was carried out by an IS “fighter”.
Though the BBC reported the 17-year-old wounded a group of people from Hong Kong – three severely and one slightly – a police spokesperson said an additional 14 passengers were treated for shock.
Mr Herrmann said those who had interacted with the young man in recent months described him as calm and quiet and they could not understand his actions.
The Bavarian Interior Ministry said police shot and killed the attacker as he fled the train. The self-styled Islamic State group said one of its followers had carried out that attack.
In May, a man stabbed four people at a German train station in a random early-morning attack in Grafing near Munich. The teenage son was not hurt.
Eyewitness Thomas Velten, who went to see what had happened after the train stopped, told German newspaper Main Post that the carriage was “like a battlefield” with a large amount of blood. Two weeks ago, he was taken in by a foster family, he said. As police drew near, the assailant started attacking the officers and was shot, according to Herrmann.
“I’m shocked by this frightful act of violence”, Christian Schuchardt said, adding that his thoughts were with the victims and other passengers “who have suffered severe injuries on their bodies and souls by this act of craziness”. They said the teen had arrived in Germany without his parents two years ago, had lived in a refugee home in Ochsenfurt in the Wuerzburg area, and more recently was with a foster family.
T- which was carrying around 30 passengers at the time – looking “like a slaughterhouse”, wounding four people onboard and one more as he ran off.
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The attack took place as the train was traveling between Treuchtlingen and Wurzburg. He was later sent to a psychiatric hospital.
