This image, taken from an undated video posted on the Aamaq News Agency, which is affiliated with the Islamic State, purports to show a 17-year-old who attacked people with an ax and knife on a train in Germany.
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– Reuters picHONG KONG, July 20 ― Relatives of a Hong Kong family injured in a brutal axe attack by an Afghan refugee on a German train have revealed details of the assault.
“I am one of the soldiers of the Islamic Caliphate, and I am going to conduct a martyrdom operation in Germany”, Riyad says in the video, speaking in an Afghan dialect known as Pashto, according to Interntional Business Times.
The attack on the train in Bavaria left five people injured. Two of them remained in critical condition Thursday.
The attacker in the train stabbing incident arrived in Germany as an unaccompanied minor in June 2015 and had been staying with a foster family in the region of the attack for two week prior.
He added that it remains hard to say whether to consider the train attack an act of terrorism or an attack by a disturbed individual.
“A lot indicates that it was an attack by an individual perpetrator, who had been incited by the propaganda of the Islamic State, ” he said. Police has found a hand-painted Daesh flag in the assailant’s room.
A leader of the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) said Merkel and her supporters were to blame for the unsafe security situation because their “welcoming policies had brought too many young, uneducated and radical Muslim men to Germany”. The boy had recently learned a friend of his had died in Afghanistan, the prosecutor said.
He wasn’t on authorities’ radar, and people who knew him said he seemed to be fitting in. The father and the boyfriend had tried to defend the other family members, dpa said.
De Maiziere said it was not yet clear when the video was made, but confirmed that investigators had determined it was authentic.
Germany previous year registered more than 1 million migrants entering the country, including more than 150,000 Afghans, but it was not immediately clear whether the suspect was among them or someone who had been in the country for a longer time. He vowed in a note that he would “take revenge on these infidels”, German investigators said Tuesday.
“It is quite probable that this was an Islamist attack”, said a ministry spokesman, adding that the assailant had shouted “Allahu akbar” (God is greatest).
While the attack has the potential to revive a heated national debate on the integration of migrants and refugees, regional authorities were quick to call for calm.
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Media reports identified the attacker as Riaz A. He boarded the train and soon after went to the onboard toilet, emerging moments later with the axe and knife drawn.
