Austrian city mourns after deadly stabbing of teenager
VILLACH
Austrians were placing candles on Sunday on the site of a stabbing that left a teenager dead and 5 other people injured, shaking the Alpine nation after last week's collapse of government talks where immigration and security were major issues.
A Syrian asylum seeker, 23, was arrested just after the attack on Feb. 15 in the southern city of Villach.
Residents were placing candles in front of shops in a street, where the attack happened in the centre of Villach, a city in Carinthia province.
A 14-year-old boy died, while five other men, the oldest 36 year old, were hurt in the attack, including 2 seriously.
A food deliverer, also from Syria, intervened, ramming his car into the attacker, who was slightly hurt, police said.
Police said they could not yet say anything about the motive of the attack, but were verifying eyewitness accounts that the attacker had shouted "Allahu Akbar" (God is greatest).
Far-right leader Herbert Kickl, whose party topped September's national elections for the first time ever, said he was "appalled" by the attack, calling for "a rigorous clamp-down on asylum".
The Villach attack comes just two days after a suspected Afghan asylum seeker rammed a car into people in the city of Munich in neighbouring Germany, killing a two-year-old girl and her mother and wounding 37 other people.
A 24-year-old Afghan asylum seeker was arrested on suspicion of deliberately driving the car into a trade union demonstration. German police said he may have had Islamist extremist motives for the attack.
