Joachim Herrmann, the interior minister of the state of Bavaria, told German TV the flag had been found among the teenager’s belongings in his room in his foster home in the nearby town of Ochsenfurt.
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The statement says the attacker was “a member of the Islamic State” group and carried out the attack in response to the militant group’s calls to attack countries that are members of the anti-IS coalition.
Germany has thus far escaped the kind of large-scale jihadist attacks seen in the southern French city of Nice last week, in which 31-year-old Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel used a truck to mow down people leaving a Bastille Day fireworks display, killing 84 people.
On Monday, at 1915 GMT (3.15am on Tuesday Singapore time), he seriously injured the four passengers on a local train between the town of Treuchtlingen and Wuerzburg in Bavaria, southern Germany.
Though a pro-ISIS media group said the attacker was an “ISIS fighter”, authorities cast doubt on that claim and it’s believed to be unlikely that he was working under the direct supervision of the terror group.
German authorities said investigators found a hand-drawn flag of the Islamic State in the teenager’s room.
The Aamaq claim is typical of the way Islamic State has sought to claim responsibility for recent so-called lone wolf attacks. The attack left at least four people wounded.
The Islamic State today claimed responsibility for the German train attack by an axe-weilding Afghan refugee.
It came just hours after a 17-year-old Afghan asylum seeker attacked passengers with an ax and knife on a train near Wuerzburg-Heidingsfeld on Monday night, before he was shot and killed by a special police unit.
Two of those injured are in a critical condition.
Herrmann said people close to the attacker told investigators he had seemed like a calm person, not overtly religious or an extremist.
Witnesses said the carriage looked “like a slaughterhouse”, with victims’ blood covering the floor.
Germany admitted almost 1.1 million asylum-seekers a year ago, with Syrians the largest group followed by Afghans. He is being held in a psychiatric hospital.
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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”.
