BERLIN (AP) – An out-of-police officer and two other passengers on a regional train in Germany beat an Iraqi-born man who stabbed five people, including a police officer, with a knife on Friday, authorities said.
A senior law enforcement official said the 31-year-old attacker was investigated for possible Islamic extremism while living in a refugee hostel in 2017, but the motive for the train attack has not been determined.
Four of the wounded were treated in hospital for injuries to their arms or face and head, and one victim was stabbed in the shoulder blade. No one was in a life-threatening condition. The attacker was also wounded and taken to a clinic.
The train had just left the Herzogenrat station near the Dutch border and was heading to the West German city of Aachen at 7:42 a.m. local time, when the man began attacking other passengers “accidentally and arbitrarily,” the interior minister said. said Herbert Raul. He praised the courage of the 60-year-old off-duty officer and the passengers who “prevented worse damage”.
He described the attack as “a horrific crime that was stopped with a huge act of courage”.
Reul said the man was subjected to a police check for possible Islamic extremism in 2017 after the refugee hostel where the man lived said he had grown a beard, changed his behavior and isolated himself from his fellow citizens.
The German news agency dpa quoted prosecutors in Aachen as saying that so far there was no hard evidence that the attack was motivated by Islamism, but that there were signs that the man may have suffered from reduced responsibility due to psychological problems.
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