An assault by a knife-wielding man that killed three folks at an area pageant in a western German metropolis is being handled as terrorism with potential hyperlinks to Islamic State, German prosecutors stated on Sunday.
The suspect is a 26-year-old Syrian man who lived in a refugee residence lower than just a few hundred meters from the place the assault happened within the city of Solingen, police stated on Sunday. The person, sporting blood-stained garments, approached a police automobile and surrendered after 11 p.m. Saturday, based on regulation enforcement officers.
The police said the attacker concentrating on the necks of his victims to deal as a lot injury as potential.
On Sunday afternoon, federal prosecutors stated they believed the suspect, recognized solely as Isa Al H. below strict German privateness guidelines, had joined the Islamic State group. Officers are additionally investigating him on potential homicide and tried homicide costs, though no formal costs have but been filed.
The suspect “shared the ideology” of the terrorist group and had “joined the group at an unspecified time” earlier than Friday’s assault, Ines Peterson, a spokeswoman for federal prosecutors, stated in a press release Sunday.
Islamic State claimed duty for the assault, praising the attacker as an “Islamic State soldier”. according to to the Website Intelligence Group, which tracks extremist organizations.
On Sunday, the location of the assault was nonetheless cordoned off and guarded by police, however mourners gathered at a close-by church to mild candles, lay flowers and depart messages of condolence on a big white banner.
“That is the primary 12 months we miss the pageant after which this occurs,” stated Tanya Zastrov, a 50-year-old Solingen resident, referring to town’s 650th birthday pageant that the assault so tragically upended. “I’m shocked and speechless,” she added.
Solingen, a metropolis of greater than 150,000, is ethnically various and a few messages of condolence had been written in languages ​​apart from German, corresponding to Turkish and Greek. In the course of the growth years of the Nineteen Sixties and Seventies, town relied on overseas employees to fill its manufacturing crops.
“If somebody opens the door for you, then you must be grateful,” stated Ahmet Kalajci, 58, who moved to Solingen from Turkey when he was 16. He added: “Then you must behave.”
Friday’s assault got here lower than three months after an analogous assault by an Afghan refugee in Mannheim, one other ethnically various metropolis within the west of the nation, about 130 miles south of Solingen. in such a case an Afghan refugee attacked an anti-immigrant rally with a knife and killed a policeman who tried to intervene.
Earlier this month, three dates on Taylor Swift’s tour have been cancelled in Vienna after US intelligence officers warned their Austrian counterparts that two youngsters had been planning to assault the crowds gathered for the occasion. The prime suspect in that plot was radicalized on-line, officers stated, and filmed himself pledging allegiance to the Islamic State.
The far-right Various for Germany social gathering, which has campaigned on a largely anti-immigrant platform and is poised to make vital positive factors in three provincial elections subsequent month, jumped at information of the assault in Solingen. Even earlier than the id of the attacker was confirmed by the police, certainly one of its leaders referred to as for modifications within the “migration and security policy”.
Authorities had earlier arrested two individuals who had been later discovered to be unlikely to have been the true attackers, Herbert Rohl, the state inside minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, the place Solingen is positioned, stated in a Saturday interview with German ARD tv.
A 15-year-old boy who was arrested early Saturday is being investigated for failing to alert police when he realized of impending plans to assault, prosecutors stated. A person arrested by a closely armed police squad on Saturday evening on the refugee housing facility the place the prime suspect additionally lived is being handled as a witness, police and Mr Rule stated.
On Saturday, Solingen’s mayor, the state governor and different political leaders gathered in a downtown sq. just a few hundred meters from the place the assault happened to mourn the victims. It was an eerie repeat of an analogous impromptu service held in Mannheim after the assault there.
On Sunday, which was speculated to be the final day of the merry pageant devoted to a metropolis finest identified for the manufacture of knives and scissors, the middle was virtually abandoned.
