A man screaming ‘Allahu Akbar’ killed one passenger and seriously injured three more after knifing them at a commuter train station in Germany on this morning.
The attacker, aged 27, is said to be a young German man and not an asylum seeker as earlier media reports suggested.
The male victim died after the random attack at Grafing station not far from Munich earlier this morning.
He first knifed a newspaper seller in the back, shortly before 5am. He then struck out at three more victims before running away.
He was caught a few feet from the station entrance and is now in custody after being overpowered at the scene. Of the three surviving victims, one is said to be seriously hurt.
German media said police had arrested the perpetrator with the prosecutor adding he had an ‘apparent Islamist’ motive.
A prosecutor’s spokesman said: ‘The assailant made remarks at the scene of the crime that indicate a political motivation – apparently an Islamist motive.
‘We are still determining what the exact remarks were.’
Bavarian Radio broadcast that the knifeman was a ‘young German not previously known to police.’
The mayor of Grafing, Angelika Obermayr, said: ‘The idea that people go on a beautiful morning go into the S-Bahn station or sell newspapers there and then become victims of a madman is just terrible.’
Germany has lost hundreds of young men who left the country to join the ranks of ISIS in Iraq and Syria.
The country’s intelligence agencies have warned in recent months of the need for increasing vigilance as terrorists plot to export Parisian-style terror to Germany.
The country has also been playing a supporting role in the fight against ISIS, but has not suffered a major attack by Islamist militants the like of which neighbouring France and Belgium have experienced.
However, two railway station in Munich were temporarily evacuated on New Year’s Eve after a terror alert over an alleged suicide bomb plot by ISIS.
Last August, two German-speaking jihadists claiming to belong to the Islamic State jihadist group threatened Germany with attacks in an online execution video, urging their ‘brothers and sisters’ in Germany and Austria to commit attacks against ‘unbelievers’ at home.
Grafing is the largest town in the upper Bavarian district of Ebersber. The station was sealed off and the investigation into the perpetrator has been taken over by the local state criminal office.
At least one platform at the station was expected to remain closed until midday, and there were some delays, railway operator Deutsche Bahn said.
