Berlin:

 On Friday evening, a violent incident occurred on a bus in Siegen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, leaving five people injured after a woman attacked them with a knife, local police confirmed, Xinhua reported.

Notably, the woman has been arrested.

The police informed that three persons were in life-threatening conditions. At least 40 other passengers were on the bus at the time of the incident. No further danger is posed, police said, according to Xinhua.

According to German newspaper Bild, the attacker is believed to be a German national, with indications suggesting that they may have been struggling with mental health issues and potentially under the influence of drugs. The police has clarified that they do not suspect terrorism to be a motivating factor.

The incident comes days after a Syrian man brought himself in and admitted to stabbing three people to death and several others at a festival in the western German city of Solingen on Friday, CNN reported citing the police.

The incident claimed the lives of two men, ages 67 and 56, and a lady, age 56.

It stunned Germany and led opposition parties to demand stricter immigration laws. The 26-year-old is accused by German prosecutors of being an ISIS member. Via its Amaq news agency, the terrorist group claimed responsibility for the incident. But it provided no proof to support that claim.

In a statement, prosecutors said that due to his “radical Islamist convictions, [the suspect] decided to kill as many people as possible at the Solingen city festival.”

The suspect went on a significant manhunt before turning himself in. The man stated, “I’m the one you’re looking for,” to the officers while covered in blood, according to the daily Bild, reported CNN.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Solingen, Germany:

German police said Sunday that a Syrian man has given himself up and confessed to killing three people and wounding eight others in a knife rampage at a street festival.

The random attack as thousands of people gathered on Friday night in the western city of Solingen has stunned Germany.

Two men aged 56 and 67 and a 56-year-old woman were killed, officials said. Four of the wounded remained in a serious condition. All of the victims were stabbed in the neck, according to police.

Police said in a statement that the suspect was a 26-year-old Syrian who had “given himself up to authorities… and declared himself responsible for the attack”.

Officers arrested a suspect in a raid at a hostel for asylum seekers on Saturday, not far from the scene of the attack, a police spokesman told AFP.

Police have evidence linking the man to the knife attacks, according to North Rhine-Westphalia state interior minister Herbert Reul. Federal prosecutors have launched an investigation into charges of “participating in a terrorist organisation”, a spokesman said.

According to the Bild and Spiegel newspapers, the suspect arrived in Germany in December 2022 and had a protected immigration status often given to those fleeing war-torn Syria.

He was not known to the security services as an extremist, the newspapers reported.

Teen arrested 

Police have also arrested a 15-year-old suspected of failing to report a criminal act. Witnesses allegedly saw the teen discussing the attack, said Markus Caspers, prosecutor of Duesseldorf, just west of Solingen.

The attack took place as thousands of people gathered for the first night of a “Festival of Diversity”, part of a series of events to mark Solingen’s 650th anniversary. The whole festival has now been cancelled.

Germany has been on high alert for extremist attacks since the Gaza war erupted on October 7 with the Hamas attacks on Israel.

German street festivals and markets have previously been hit.

A truck rampage at a Berlin Christmas market in 2016 killed 12 people. In May, a police officer was killed and five people were wounded in a knife attack at a far-right rally in Mannheim, with an Islamist motive suspected.

The jihadist Islamic State group’s Amaq propaganda arm said “the perpetrator of the attack on a gathering of Christians” in Solingen “was a soldier of the Islamic State”.

IS said the attack was carried out as “revenge for Muslims in Palestine and everywhere”, in an apparent reference to the Gaza conflict.

The claim could not be immediately verified, though German officials had said “a terrorist motive cannot be excluded”.

Interior Minister Nancy Faeser had warned this month that Germany was in “the firing line” of Islamist groups.

National and local leaders, including Chancellor Olaf Scholz, said the country had been “deeply shocked” by the deaths in Solingen, a city of 160,000 people.

Witness Lars Breitzke told the Solinger Tageblatt newspaper he was near the attack, close to the main stage, and “understood from the expression on the singer’s face that something was wrong”.

“And then, a metre away from me, a person fell,” said Breitzke, who at first thought it was someone who had had too much to drink. 

When he turned around, he saw other people on the ground in pools of blood.

During a visit to the site of the tragedy Faeser called for the country to “remain united” as she denounced “those who want to stir up hatred”. 

“Let us not be divided,” she said.

Scholz’s centre-left coalition faces regional elections next week in the east of the country, where the far-right AfD is leading in polls.

Germany took in more than a million asylum seekers in 2015-2016 at the height of Europe’s migrant crisis.

The influx was deeply divisive in Germany and fuelled the popularity of the AfD.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)