ISIS has claimed responsibility for the attack, and its news agency, Amaq, on Tuesday released the video of the young man speaking in Pashto, waving a knife at a camera calling himself “a soldier of the caliphate”.
Advertisement
German officials didn’t identify the attacker or the victims, but Hong Kong’s immigration department said among those wounded were four members of a family of five from the southern Chinese city.
Police officers stand by a regional train in Wuerzburg southern Germany on July 18, 2016 after a man attacked train passengers with an axe.
Authorities, yesterday said they had found a hand-painted IS flag and what they called a suicide letter among the attacker’s belongings.
“There is much to indicate that this was an attack committed by a lone assailant who was spurred on by the propaganda of the so-called Islamic State”, de Maiziere told reporters in Berlin.
The letter is said to bear this message: “And now pray for me that I can get revenge on these non-believers, pray for me that I go to heaven”. The terrorist is one of almost 15,000 unaccompanied minors who applied for asylum in Germany in 2015, according to the BAMF agency for refugees.
After the initial incident, the train’s emergency brakes were deployed and the attacker fled into a nearby town, Herrmann said at a news conference Tuesday.
“Witnesses have not described him as in any way radicalized or fanatic”, Herrmann said.
The 17-year-old Afghan refugee, whose identity was not revealed by police, severely wounded four people in the train before he was shot dead by police. Prosecutors said the teenager had just learned of a friend’s death in Afghanistan over the weekend.
The assailant had arrived as an unaccompanied minor in Germany in June 2015 and had been staying with a foster family in the region for the last two weeks, Herrmann said. Police shot and killed him shortly thereafter.
Just last week, a terrorist attack was carried out in the French city of Nice that claimed the lives of at least 84 individuals during the annual celebration of the St. Bastille Day.
Germany is likely to face more Islamist attacks, its interior minister said on Wednesday (Thursday NZ Time), but played down any link between the government’s open-door refugee policy and Monday’s axe assault on a train in Bavaria. IS claimed that one of its “followers” had carried out the attack.
He said: “This is a tragedy, but it is really a tragedy beyond the people who are directly affected, because this is a very contentious issue in Germany, the way we are dealing with refugees”.
“Regarding the attack to Hong Kong residents in Germany, we have already reached the (inaudible) of Germany today and we visited two of the injured Hong Kong residents at the hospital”.
Advertisement
He listed security measures taken in recent months, including making journeys overseas to terroristic organizations punishable, and improving collaboration with national and global security services.
