Solingen stabbing attack: suspect believed to be member of Islamic State, say authorities

A suspect arrested over a stabbing rampage in the western German city of Solingen is thought to be a member of Islamic State, federal prosecutors have said, after Friday’s attack in which three people died and eight were injured.

Düsseldorf police and prosecutors said in a joint statement early on Sunday that the suspect in custody was a 26-year-old Syrian man who had turned himself in.

A spokesperson for German federal prosecutors, who have taken over the investigation of the case, also said the man was suspected of being a member of Islamic State. The extremist group on Saturday claimed responsibility for the attack without providing any evidence.

“The involvement of this person is currently under intensive investigation,” the joint statement said. The man was later identified by federal prosecutors as Issa Al H, with his last name omitted in line with German privacy laws.

Wearing handcuffs and leg shackles, he was taken on Sunday from the police station in Solingen to make a first appearance before a judge at the federal court of justice in Karlsruhe.

The frenzied knife attack unfolded over a few minutes on Friday evening at a festival of diversity to celebrate the 650th anniversary of Solingen, a city of 160,000 people near Cologne and Düsseldorf. Three people from the region – one woman and two men – were killed and eight others were injured, four of them seriously.

Citing officials, the Associated Press reported that a 15-year-old boy was arrested on suspicion he knew about the planned attack and failed to inform authorities, but that he was not the attacker. Two female witnesses told police they overheard the boy and an unknown person before the attack speaking about intentions that corresponded to the bloodshed.

The attack is already stirring debate about Germany’s asylum policy ahead of regional elections in Saxony and Thuringia on 1 September , where the far-right, anti-immigration Alternative für Deutschland is expected to do well.

The leader of the centre-right CDU opposition party Friedrich Merz said Germany should stop admitting further refugees from Syria and Afghanistan in a letter on his website entitled “enough is enough”.

Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, who has been under pressure to tackle a rise in knife violence in cities, said on Saturday he was “shocked” by the “terrible event” and stood with the terrorised city in mourning the victims.

The festival , which was supposed to run through to Sunday, drawing up to 25,000 people, was cancelled, as were weekend festivities in nearby towns.

The German DJ Topic, who is from Solingen, said in a post on Instagram he was performing on the stage when security personnel approached him and informed him of the attack.

He was asked to continue his set “to avoid causing a mass panic”, he said. “So I kept playing even though it was incredibly hard.” He said he was told to stop 10-15 minutes later, and “since the attacker was still on the run, we hid in a nearby store while police helicopters circled above us”, he wrote.

“I still can’t believe it … this was supposed to be a free festival for everyone. Really close friends of mine were there with their small kids,” he said in a video recorded in his childhood bedroom. “What’s happening to this world … my thoughts are with all the victims.”

Germany’s federal criminal police office has said there have been around a dozen Islamist-motivated attacks since 2000. One of the biggest was in 2016, when a Tunisian man drove a truck into a Christmas market in Berlin, killing 12 and injuring dozens.