German police arrest 26-year-old man for knife attack in Solingen | Crime news

The suspect is a Syrian citizen who turned himself in and admitted the crime, police said.

German police have arrested a suspect in connection with a shooting spree in the western city of Solingen that left three people dead and eight injured.

The suspect, a 26-year-old Syrian, turned himself in and confessed to the crime, police and the Düsseldorf public prosecutor's office said in a joint statement on Sunday.

“This individual’s involvement is currently under intensive investigation,” they said.

The attack, which IS claimed responsibility for and whose authenticity has not yet been confirmed, occurred on Friday evening during a celebration to mark Solingen's 650th anniversary.

Late Saturday, a government official announced on German television the arrest of a man he said authorities had been searching for for 24 hours since the attack.

North Rhine-Westphalia's Interior Minister Herbert Reul told ARD broadcaster ARD that he was “a little relieved” after authorities spent the day following a “hot lead” that had led to the arrest.

The police were busy searching all day and arrested two people who were probably not the perpetrator, said Reul.

“The real suspect is the one we just arrested,” he said. The person is being questioned and evidence has been seized, he said, adding that the man is linked to a refugee shelter that was raided earlier in the day.

Earlier on Saturday, a prosecutor announced that another person had been arrested: a 15-year-old who is suspected of not reporting a crime.

Witnesses allegedly saw the teenager discussing the attack with a possible perpetrator immediately before it happened, said Markus Caspers, public prosecutor in Düsseldorf.

According to the newspapers Bild and Spiegel, the suspect is a 26-year-old Syrian who came to Germany in December 2022 and received protected immigration status, which is often granted to people fleeing the war-torn country.

The media reported that he had not previously been known to the security authorities as an “extremist”.

At its peak, ISIS controlled large areas of Iraq and Syria and carried out several deadly attacks around the world. But in 2017, the group suffered a territorial defeat and its brutal rule collapsed after it lost the areas it controlled to the Iraqi government and various parties in the Syrian civil war.

The group has previously claimed responsibility for attacks in which it was not involved, including a mass shooting in Las Vegas in 2017.

According to official information, the three people killed on Friday were men aged 56 and 67 and a 56-year-old woman.

There are “no known connections” between the victims, Caspers said at a press conference.

The attack occurred as thousands of people gathered in front of a stage for the first night of the three-day “Festival of Diversity,” which has since been canceled.

Solingen is a city with around 150,000 inhabitants between Düsseldorf and Cologne.