What we know about the deadly German knife attack

SOLINGEN - A knife attack at a street festival in western Germany killed three people on Friday.

A Syrian man has been detained on suspicion of carrying out the rampage on behalf of the Islamic State (IS) group.

Here is what we know:

- Festival attacked -

The attack took place at around 9:40 pm (1940 GMT) on the Fronhof, a busy square in Solingen city centre. Stages and various attractions had been set up as part of celebrations to mark the city's 650th anniversary.

The attacker struck in front of one of the stages during a concert by the group Suzan Koecher's Suprafon, aiming for the victims' necks, according to police. He then fled the scene.

A witness told the local daily Solinger Tageblatt that he was just a few metres away and "understood from the expression on the singer's face that something was wrong".

"And then, a metre away from me, a person fell," the witness, Lars Breitzke, said.

When he turned around, he saw other people lying on the ground amid pools of blood, he added.

Two men aged 56 and 67 and a 56-year-old woman were killed in the attack and eight people were wounded, four of them seriously.

- Islamic State claim -

On Saturday evening, the IS group said in a statement that one of its members had carried out the attack in "revenge" for Muslims "in Palestine and everywhere".

"The perpetrator of the attack on a gathering of Christians in the city of Solingen in Germany yesterday was a soldier of the Islamic State," the statement from the jihadists' Amaq news agency said on the Telegram messaging app.

Anti-terrorism prosecutors in Germany have taken over the investigation.

- Suspect confesses -

Police said on Sunday that a 26-year-old Syrian had turned himself in to the authorities and confessed to carrying out the attack.

The suspect, named as Issa Al H., managed to escape amid the panic and threw his knife into a bin, according to details published by the Bild daily that have not been confirmed by investigators.

Police have seized the knife as well as the suspect's "blood-stained" jacket, which still contained his wallet and identity papers, Bild reported.

After the attack, the suspect reportedly took cover in a courtyard around the corner from the home for refugees where he had been living in the city centre.

He was found there during a police patrol in the pouring rain just before midnight on Saturday, Bild said.

Issa Al H. arrived in Germany in December 2022 and had a protected immigration status often given to those fleeing war-torn Syria, according to Bild and other news outlets.

He was meant to have been deported to Bulgaria, where he had first arrived in the European Union, but the operation failed after he went missing.

He was not known to the security services as an extremist considered dangerous.

Police also arrested a 15-year-old after witnesses allegedly saw him discussing the attack with a man who could have been the perpetrator shortly before it happened.

- High alert -

German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser warned earlier this month that "the threat posed by Islamist terrorism remains high" in Germany.

The biggest danger is thought to be posed by Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K), the same group believed to have been behind March's deadly massacre in a Moscow concert hall.

The number of people considered Islamist extremists in Germany fell slightly from 27,480 in 2022 to 27,200 last year, according to a report from the federal domestic intelligence agency.

Islamist extremists have carried out several attacks in Germany in recent years, the deadliest being a truck rampage at a Berlin Christmas market in December 2016 that killed 12 people.

More recently, an Islamist motive is suspected in the killing of a police officer in a knife attack on the market square in the city of Mannheim in late May.

In January, police arrested three people over an alleged attack plot targeting the cathedral in Cologne on New Year's Eve.

In July, German authorities raided and banned the Hamburg Islamic Centre, an association that the interior ministry described as an "Islamist extremist organisation pursuing anti-constitutional objectives". - AFP