A woman was killed and at least two injured in a machete attack near the German city of Stuttgart.
A man has been arrested in connection with the attack in the city of Reutlingen, just south of Stuttgart.
German police have confirmed that the stabber is a Syrian refugee but have not released his name, and state that his motives still remain unclear.
The attack comes against the backdrop of heightened tensions in Europe generally, and in Germany particularly, following the ax attack on a train last week in which five people were injured, and the shooting in the Olympia shopping mall in Munich over the weekend, in which 9 people were murdered, and 35 wounded.
German newspaper Bild reports that the machete wielding man attacked outside of a kebab shop, with bystanders fleeing in panic after seeing the knife.
An eyewitness told the paper that the attacker was run over by a passing BMW, preventing him from continuing his stabbing rampage, after which he “lay prone on the ground and didn’t move.”
Updates to follow.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnrPTEAT3x8&ab_channel=V
BERLIN — A Syrian asylum-seeker killed a woman with a machete and wounded two others Sunday outside a bus station in the southwestern German city of Reutlingen, as the country remained on high alert after last week’s massacre in Munich that left nine dead.
German authorities said the 21-year-old man behind the fatal slashing was known to them and had an argument with his victim, a kebab-stand worker, before attacking her around 4:30 p.m.
The suspect wounded another woman and a man as he fled. He was quickly captured nearby. Police said they do not suspect any terror links.
The attack comes just two days after a teen gunman targeting children murdered nine people and injured 35 before turning the illegal pistol on himself at a Munich mall.
David Ali Sonboly began plotting his bloodbath last year after visiting the site where a 17-year-old killer aimed at German schoolkids in 2009, authorities revealed Sunday morning.
Sonboly, 18, took pictures of the previous massacre at a secondary school in Winnenden, Germany, that claimed 15 lives and then began writing a twisted “manifesto’’ detailing how he planned to carry out his own heinous attack, officials said.
Passages from the macabre musings have not been released.
Sonboly was “obsessed with that attack,’’ Bavaria State Criminal Police Chief Robert Heimberger said Sunday, referencing Winnenden.
An ongoing investigation continues to find no links between the carnage-obsessed teen and any radical or extremist groups, but unearthed the trove of electronic data and written materials detailing the troubled teens’ chilling obsessions — and intentions.
“We didn’t find the Breivik manifesto on his computer,” police sources told ABC, referring to papers written by another mass killer, Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 77 people in Norway 2011. “He wrote his own manifesto, describing how he was going to do the crime.”
Other recovered items included a book by a U.S. Academic, translated into German, on school shootings entitled “Why Kids Kill: Inside the Minds of School Shooters.”
“He was very intensely interested in the subject,” Munich police chief Hubertus Andrae said Sunday. Andrae described the mall massacre as a “classic act by a deranged person.”
“He had been preparing [the shooting] for a year,” Heimberger said, adding the teen was an avid fan of first-person shooter games such as “Counter-Strike Source.”
Authorities said Sunday they believe the pistol used in the shooting was purchased via the “darknet,” an illegal corner of the internet.
The deranged youth also had a history of mental illness, receiving two months of inpatient care at a psychiatric facility in 2015, according to Steinkraus-Koch.
“The suspect had fears of contact with others” and depression, the prosecutor added. Authorities are looking into reports that he may have been bullied in school.
Though he was the son of Iranian parents seeking asylum in Germany, some witness statements hinted at a possible hatred of foreigners.
Shopper Hueseyin Bayri told The Associated Press the troubled teen cursed foreigners and bellowed “I’m German!” and “I will kill you all” as he pulled the trigger.
Footage of the massacre also depicts Sonboly yelling anti-foreigner slurs.
Meanwhile, information continues to surface about the victims who lost their lives during the brutal attack — including the story of a brother who used his own body as a human shield to save his twin sister during the bloodbath.
Huseyin Dayick, 19, was shot twice when he jumped in front of his sister as Sonboly opened fire at the Olympia Center, The Sun reports.
His sister is not named.
The heroic Greek teen was in the mall’s MacDonald’s when shots rang out — yet he opted to stay and confront the gunman rather than running, according to the report.
The shooter lured people to the mall’s fast-food court by hacking into a Facebook account and announcing a fake giveaway, Heimberger said.
Dayick was at the shopping center buying gifts for family when gunfire started.
Other named victims included Dijamant Zabergja, 21, Armela Segashi and her 14-year-old friend Sabina Sulaj, Gulliano Kollmann, 18, and 15-year-old Can Leyla.