Police have arrested a minor in the attack case
German police have arrested a 15-year-old boy in connection with a knife attack on Friday night that left three people dead and eight injured, four of them seriously. At a festival in Solingen, West Germany,
thorsten fleeceA police spokesman said the youth was There is a suspicion of prior knowledge of the incident and took no action to stop it, but investigators believe he was not the attacker, who is still on the run and is believed to have acted alone.
the prisoner who was He was arrested this Saturday from his family’s homeThe suspects were identified based on the testimony of two people who heard a suspicious conversation prior to the incident and who contacted police after the attack.
“We only know that he spoke to a man, we don’t know for sure if that man is the attacker,” the prosecutor responsible for the fight against terrorism in the North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) region said at a press conference. Markus Caspers,
The prosecutor did not want to give details of the alleged perpetrator of the attack Contradictory evidence has been collected And that is the little clarity that has been achieved so far in the matter.
“There would be nothing more damaging than giving out a description, calling on the public to assist in the search, and then discovering during the investigation that the person looks completely different,” he said.
Potential terrorist act
The events took place at around 10pm on Friday (20 GMT), when a man of unknown identity arrived He began stabbing people indiscriminately at the Frohnhof, A market in the city center where a stage was set up for events commemorating the city’s 650 years. According to witnesses quoted in the media, The attacker was wearing black clothes and had a beard And he managed to escape amidst the noise.
The prosecutor indicated that, as police had anticipated throughout the day, The suspicion that this attack was a terrorist act cannot be ruled out“There is no other obvious motive. The victims were strangers, they had no relationship. So we think it is possible that this was a terrorist act,” Caspers said.
The director of the police operation supported this hypothesis by confirming in response to questions from the press that, according to images of the attack, the stabbing was aimed at on the victims’ necks “with great precision”.,
Police officials also made public the age of the deceased, Two men aged 56 and 67 and a woman aged 56and the evolution of the injured, of which four are in critical condition, two in serious condition and two in minor condition.
However, they did not want to confirm information published in the media about the possible discovery of the murder weapon, a knife, as they pointed out that a lot of physical evidence has been collected whose connection to the crime is still being investigated.
German Chancellor Olaf ScholzThe “brutal” attack has “shocked” the world, which he described as a “horrific incident”. “The perpetrator of the attack has brutally murdered several people,” Scholz said in a message on the X network. , he added.
Minister of the Interior, Nancy FeserAccording to a brief statement issued to the media, security forces are reported to be making every effort to “catch the culprit and clarify the background to the attack.”