Afghan teen killed after injuring passengers on German train

A man attacked passengers travelling on a regional train with a knife and an axe on Monday evening, leaving five people injured, two critically.

He said the text was subject to interpretation, and stressed that the attack was no reason to cast suspicion on other refugees or for Germans to stop living their lives normally. Two of the wounded are in critical condition.

“You can see I have lived in your own home and have planned to behead you in your own territory”, the young man says in Pashto while brandishing a knife.

In the video posted by the Islamic State’s Aamaq news agency, the man claimed he was a soldier “of the Islamic State and will be carrying out an attack in Germany today”.

The 17-year-old, whose name has not been released, attacked passengers with an ax and knife on a train near Wuerzburg-Heidingsfeld on Monday night, before he was shot and killed by a special police unit which happened to be nearby.

The assailant jumped off the train after someone pulled the emergency cord and got about 500 meters into Wuerzburg’s Heidingsfeld district, attacked a woman with his ax and ran off before police gave chase.

However, Herrmann said it was still too early to say whether the youth was a member of the group.

German officials did not identify the victims, but Hong Kong’s immigration department said four members of a family of five from the southern Chinese city were among those injured.

The woman’s being treated in a hospital for life-threatening injuries.

Herrmann said it was a tragedy that a “family from Hong Kong comes here as tourists to visit Wuerzburg… and then becomes victim on a train here in Bavaria in an attack conducted by an offender who came from Afghanistan and who was originally seeking shelter here”.

Dpa reported that the attacker injured the 62-year-old father, the 58-year-old mother, their adult daughter and her boyfriend. A fifth family member, a 17-year-old son, was not hurt.

The attacker fled the train when it halted at a station on the outskirts of Wuerzburg. “I’m shocked by this disgusting act of violence”, Christian Schuchardt said. He was pursued by a police unit and shot dead after attacking a woman and trying to assault the police officers, Herrmann said. About 30 passengers were on the train at the time.

Bishop Hofmann also thanked police, ambulance and pastoral emergency workers at the scene.

Correcting initial information that the suspect came to Germany some two years ago, Koehler said he had been first registered as a refugee in June 2015, when he crossed into the country from Austria. Investigators are talking to the family.

According to dpa, the attacker was interning at a bakery and had good chances of getting into a job training program.

He was not one of the 1.1m asylum-seekers who entered Germany under Angela Merkel’s “open-door” refugee policy a year ago.

The Islamic State also said it was behind last week’s attack in Nice but investigators have struggled to establish a direct connection between the group and the Tunisian national who drove the truck that killed 84 people. One man later died.

A German police investigator says that among many notes found in the train attacker’s home is one that convinced them that his motivation was Islamic extremism. That man was sent to a psychiatric hospital and authorities said they found no links to terrorist groups.