Berlin, Jan 1 (IANS) Several people were injured, including two hospitalised, in a random knife attack in western Berlin on New Year’s Eve, German police reported.
The incident took place on Tuesday around 11:50 a.m. outside a supermarket in Charlottenburg, a typically quiet district of the capital, Xinhua news agency reported quoting German newspaper Bild.
Witnesses said the assailant stabbed indiscriminately before several passers-by intervened and subdued him.
Emergency services responded shortly after, and the suspect was taken into police custody. German news agency dpa reported that there is currently no indication of a terrorist motive behind the attack.
Emergency services were alerted shortly before 12 p.m. local time (11:00 UTC/GMT), police said.
According to the reports the attack began inside a supermarket on the corner of Quedlinburger Strasse and Sommeringstrasse. Police said the knifeman then moved outside to the sidewalk close to a nearby hotel.
The suspect, a Syrian national who lives in Sweden, is said to have stabbed his victims with a knife he stole from the supermarket, police said in a statement.
Police have not released further details about the incident or the victims yet, and the investigation is ongoing.
Earlier in the year 2024, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz vowed to curb irregular migration in the wake of a Syrian asylum seeker being charged with killing three people in a stabbing attack in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia and deport those found ineligible or found involved in crime.
“This was terrorism, terrorism against us all,” he said during a visit to Solingen town where the incident took place in August 2024, the BBC reported.
The Chancellor said that illegal immigration “must go down” and that his government would do “everything we can to ensure that those who cannot and should not stay here in Germany are repatriated and deported” and deportations would be sped up, if needed.
The deadly attack at that time gained a political dimension as soon as officials revealed the suspect was Syrian refugee Issa Al H., 26, suspected of links to the terror organisation Islamic State and stirred up the tense debate about migration.
–IANS
int/rs
