Witnesses alerted police shortly after 9:30 pm CET that an unknown perpetrator had wounded several people with a knife in a central square, the Fronhof.
ADVERTISEMENTThe so-called Islamic State group Saturday claimed responsibility for a knife attack in Solingen that killed three people and wounded eight, according to its Amaq news site.
The attacker targeted Christians and a “soldier of the Islamic State” who carried out the attack “to avenge Muslims in Palestine and everywhere,” the group said in a post on Telegram.
The assailant stabbed several people at random, local media reported.
Afterwards, police confirmed that the suspect was on the run and that a manhunt was now under way.
Police then arrested a 15-year-old early on Saturday, but hours later said he was not the perpetrator.
At a news conference on Saturday, prosecutor Markus Caspers said a terrorist motive had not been ruled out and that authorities were still investigating who was behind the attack.
Witnesses alerted police shortly after 9:30 pm CET on Friday that an unknown perpetrator had wounded several people with a knife on the central square in Solingen, where musicians had been performing on a stage to celebrate the city's 650th anniversary.
One of the festival organisers, Philipp Müller, appeared on the stage and asked festivalgoers to “go calmly".
"Please keep your eyes open, because unfortunately the perpetrator hasn't been caught,” Müller said, emphasising that many people had been wounded by “a knifeman”.
"This evening, we in Solingen are all in shock. We all wanted to celebrate our city's anniversary together and now have dead and wounded to lament," the city's mayor, Tim Kurzbach, said in a Facebook post.
"It breaks my heart that an attack on our city happened," he added.
The region’s top security official, Herbert Reul, gave a figure of eight injured as he visited the scene in the early hours of Saturday. Five people had been reported as injured earlier.
“None of us knows why” the attack took place, said Reul, who is the Interior minister of North Rhine-Westphalia state.
“I can’t say anything about the motive now.” It isn’t clear who the assailant was, he said, but the attacker left the scene “relatively quickly.”
Authorities said on Saturday that a large-scale search was underway in the western city of Solingen.
ADVERTISEMENT“The police are currently conducting a large-scale search for the perpetrator,” police said in a statement. A large number of law enforcement units were assembled around Solingen city centre. “Both victims and witnesses are currently being questioned,” they said.
Spike in knife crime in Germany continues
The Festival of Diversity, marking the city's 650th anniversary, began on Friday and was supposed to run through Sunday, but it has now been cancelled.
Several stages in the city's central streets offered attractions such as live music, cabarets, and acrobatics. Solingen has about 160,000 residents and is located near Cologne and Düsseldorf.
There has been concern about increased knife violence in Germany.
ADVERTISEMENTWith a series of attacks over the past year, Germany's Interior Minister Nancy Faeser recently proposed toughening weapons laws to allow only knives with a blade measuring up to 6cm to be carried in public, rather than 12cm, which is currently allowed.