Fabian Hench, regional police spokesman.
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Still, he added it was hard to say whether the train attack was an act of terror or an attack by a disturbed individual.
The Inquisitr reported on Tuesday on the brutal axe attack, which affected 20 people on a train traveling between Treuchtlingen and Würzburg in Germany.
He was shot dead by police as he fled. The suspect has not been named. In the footage, Riyadh claims he is a “soldier of the caliphate”.
A still image from an ISIS video posted July 19.
“Like several EU countries, like the whole EU, Germany is also in the target area of worldwide terrorism. the situation is serious”, said Thomas de Maiziere. It said that investigators were trying to see if the suspect had accomplices or mentors.
The perpetrator was initially thought to be Afghan but de Maiziere said on Wednesday there were indications he was from Pakistan. IS said one of its followers had carried out that attack.
The assailant jumped off the train, and was chased and confronted by police.
Investigations pointed to the train attacker being a “lone wolf” who had been spurred into action by Islamic State propaganda, said de Maiziere.
“[We] are just as concerned about such attacks as are non-Jews here”, Josef Schuster, head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, told JTA following the Monday night attack, which left five people injured, including four members of one family visiting from Hong Kong. The fifth victim was a woman outside of the train, injured as the suspect attempted to escape.
Investigators learned from close friends of the attacker that he had recently lost a close friend in Afghanistan, but who the friend was and how he or she died remains unknown, according to the Times. A Pakistani document was also found in his room.
German authorities sent him to an asylum home for unaccompanied minors in Ochsenfurt near Wuerzburg where he lived until two weeks ago when he was placed with a foster family living in the county of Wuerzburg.
He had an eastern accent similar to that of Pakistanis who speak Pashto, leading to speculation that he may have lied about his homeland when he came to Germany past year as an unaccompanied minor asylum seeker to increase his chances of being allowed to stay.
Germany absorbed more than one million refugees previous year. Some Germans have been concerned over the presence of terror groups in the country – both the potential for attackers to slip in with migrants and the concern they may be able to radicalize disaffected youths.
John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org said the latest attack looks more like the work of a lone madman, rather than organized worldwide terror groups. Germany right now has accepted more refugees than any other country, numbering in the hundreds of thousands. The family’s 17-year-old son was reportedly uninjured.
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“Like several EU countries, like the whole EU, Germany is also in the target area of global terrorism”.
