German investigators, at least so far, have not connected the assailant to ISIS.
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Herrmann told ZDF Television the attacker came to Germany two years ago as an unaccompanied minor, and applied for asylum in March. Herrmann said the family had visited the medieval town of Rothenburg ob der Tauber before the attack. The teen, a refugee from Afghanistan, lived with a foster family near Ochsenfurt in Southern Germany, the BBC reported.
Earlier on Tuesday, Amaq news agency, affiliated with Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) released a video allegedly showing the axe-wielding attacker.
Investigators said they were in possession of a video, the content of which was being “analyzed”. Bamberg prosecutor Erik Ohlenschlager said that at least two of the wounded were suffering from “acute life-threatening” wounds.
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open-door policy toward refugees has been criticized by some political leaders including Bavarian Premier Horst Seehofer, who say the influx is more than the country can cope with.
“This is a big mosaic puzzle right now and we will do everything to pull information together in order to assess his motivation”, he said.
Addressing his father, the young man asked him to pray that he could take revenge “on the infidels” and “get to Heaven”, officials said.
Kohler said it was clear that the attack was “politically motivated”.
“Just because [the Islamic State group] is claiming this attack does not mean there is anything to it”, Alexander Gross, superintendent criminal detective of the Bavarian State Office of Criminal Investigations, told The Times.
In May, a man stabbed four people at a German train station in a random early-morning attack in Grafing near Munich. There was a stabbing in February and then another knife attack in May.
In the video, the authenticity of which it was not immediately possible to verify, the man also says he is “one of the soldiers of the Islamic State and will carry out a martyrdom operation in Germany”, according to the Arabic-language subtitles.
After the passengers called for help, the train stopped at the town of Heidingsfeld, near Wuerzburg, where police backed by helicopters were waiting.
A teenager armed with an axe and a knife has attacked about 20 passengers on a train in northern Bavaria, according to local police. “And the police opened fire”.
He attacked a woman walking her dog along the river while trying to evade police.
Last year Germany registered more than one million migrants, including more than 150,000 Afghans, although the number has slowed dramatically this year since new European Union measures were taken to stop the flow. The country is facing a migrant crisis and the Telegraph believes these attacks could be a result.
Three Syrian men were arrested last month on suspicions that they were planning to carry out a mass casualty attack in Dusseldorf. Another 14 people are being treated for shock.
Police spokesman Fabian Hench said four people had been severely wounded and a fourth slightly injured.
After the train made an emergency stop, the suspect fled and a few hundred meters (yards) away encountered two women walking a dog.
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A German official said on Tuesday the victims appeared to be Asian tourists.
