Afghan teen refugee injures four with axe in train in Germany

WÜRZBURG, Germany – Agence France-Presse

German emergency services workers work in the area where a man with an axe attacked passengers on a train near Wuerzburg. REUTERS photo

A 17-year-old Afghan refugee injured four people with an axe and knife in a train in Germany late July 18, which was claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). 

German authorities also said they had found a hand-painted ISIL flag among the belongings of the asylum seeker, who seriously injured four members of a family of tourists from Hong Kong in his rampage.

The teenage assailant was killed as he tried to flee.

“The perpetrator of the stabbing attack in Germany was one of the fighters of the Islamic State,” the ISIL-linked Amaq news agency said.

The assault on a regional train near the southern city of Würzburg late July 18 left two of the victims critically hurt, said Joachim Herrmann, the interior minister of Bavaria state.
  
“We hope that those who were gravely injured make it,” Herrmann told ZDF public television.
    
Germany has thus far escaped the kind of large-scale jihadist attack seen in the southern French city of Nice last week, in which 31-year-old Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel used a truck to mow down 84 people.

That attack was also claimed by ISIL.

The terrifying assault in Bavaria is likely to revive a heated national debate about integrating migrants and refugees after a record influx last year.

The assailant had arrived as an unaccompanied minor in Germany about two years ago and had been staying with a foster family in the region for the last two weeks, Herrmann said.

“It is quite probable that this was an Islamist attack,” said a ministry spokesman hours after the attack, adding that the assailant was heard shouting “Allahu akbar” (God is greatest).

However, he stressed that the investigation was ongoing and that the teenager appeared to have acted alone.

“We must determine what the motive was and to what extent he really belonged to the Islamist scene or self-radicalized very recently,” Herrmann said, adding that the assailant had no criminal record in Germany.

The assault happened around 9:15 p.m. (1915 GMT) on the train which runs between the town of Treuchtlingen and Würzburg in Bavaria.

An eyewitness who lives next to the railway station told DPA news agency that the train, which had been carrying around 25 people, looked “like a slaughterhouse” with blood covering the floor.