Knife attack in Solingen, Germany, leaves three dead, police say: NPR

SOLINGEN, Germany — An attacker killed three people and seriously injured at least five with a knife at a folk festival in the western German city of Solingen late Friday, authorities said.

Shortly after 9:30 p.m., witnesses alerted the police that an unknown perpetrator had randomly injured several people with a knife at the Fronhof. The police said the attacker was on the run and that they had little information about the man so far.

They assumed that the stabbings were committed by a lone perpetrator.

One of the festival organizers, Philipp Müller, appeared on stage and asked the festival-goers to “stay calm and please keep your eyes open, because unfortunately the perpetrator has not yet been caught.”

He said many people were injured by “a knife attacker.”

At least one helicopter was seen in the air, while numerous police and emergency vehicles were on the road with blue lights flashing and several roads were closed.

The police put the number of seriously injured at five. Herbert Reul, the region's top security officer, spoke of six injured when he was on site in the early hours of Saturday morning.

A party mood quickly turned into a shock

“None of us knows why” the attack took place, said North Rhine-Westphalia’s Interior Minister Reul.

“I cannot give any information about the motive at this time,” and it is also unclear who the perpetrator is. The attacker left the crime scene “relatively quickly,” he said.

Mayor Tim Kurzbach said in a Facebook post: “All of us in Solingen are in shock this evening. We wanted to celebrate our city's birthday together and now we have deaths and injuries to mourn.”

“It breaks my heart that there has been an attack on our city,” he added.

The local newspaper Solingen daily newspaper quoted Celine Derikartz, the festival's reporter, as saying: “The atmosphere is eerie.” She said the party mood had turned into a state of shock within minutes and she had seen festival-goers crying.

The “Festival of Diversity” to mark the city's 650th anniversary began on Friday and is scheduled to run until Sunday. Several stages in central streets offer attractions such as live music, cabaret and acrobatics.

The city canceled the rest of the festival after the attack.

Solingen has about 160,000 inhabitants and is located near the major cities of Cologne and Düsseldorf.

There has recently been concern in Germany about a rise in knife violence.

In May, a police officer was killed in a knife attack by an Afghan immigrant on members of a group that describes itself as opponents of “political Islam.”

Germany's top security official, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, proposed tightening the gun laws this month. Carrying knives in public would in future only be permitted with a blade length of up to six centimeters. Currently, a blade length of 12 centimeters is permitted.