German police search for perpetrator of stabbing at festival with three dead

Police were searching for an unknown attacker on Saturday, hours after he killed three people and injured others at a festival in the western German city of Solingen.

Eight people were injured, five of them seriously, police said early Saturday. Police had previously reported four seriously injured people.

“Both victims and witnesses are currently being questioned. The police are currently conducting a major search for the perpetrator,” the police statement said.

The incident occurred on Friday around 9:40 p.m. local time, when the man attacked several people with a knife, police said.

The perpetrator had deliberately aimed for the people's throats, the police said. No further details or a motive could be given.

“Our security authorities are doing everything they can to catch the perpetrator and clarify the background to the attack,” said Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser in a post on X.

The attack took place on the Fronhof, a market square in Solingen where live bands were playing. It was during a celebration to mark the 650th anniversary of the city in the North Rhine-Westphalian state, which borders the Netherlands.

The German musician, who goes by the pseudonym Topic, said he was playing on a nearby stage when the incident occurred. He was informed of the incident but was told to move on “to avoid a mass panic attack,” he posted on Instagram.

Eventually he was told to stop, and “with the attacker still fleeing, we hid in a nearby store while police helicopters circled overhead,” Topic wrote.

The authorities have cancelled the rest of the festival weekend.

Fatal stabbings and shootings are relatively rare in Germany. The government announced earlier this month that it wanted to tighten the rules on knives that can be carried in public by reducing the maximum permitted length.

In June, a 29-year-old police officer died after being stabbed in Mannheim during an attack on a right-wing extremist demonstration. Several people were injured in a knife attack on a train in 2021.

North Rhine-Westphalia's Interior Minister Herbert Reul visited the crime scene early Saturday. He told reporters that it was a targeted attack on human life, but declined to comment on the motives.