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Islamic State on Saturday claimed responsibility for a knife attack in Germany that killed three people and wounded eight others. A manhunt for the assailant continued.
The militant group said the attacker is a “soldier of the Islamic State” and that Christians were targeted in the assault, which occurred at a festival in the German city of Solingen late Friday, according to media reports.
The killings were “in revenge for Muslims in Palestine and everywhere,” the group said, according to the reports. It was not clear how close the link was between the attacker and Islamic State.
German police said earlier Saturday that a 15-year-old person had been arrested in connection with the attack , but the hunt for the perpetrator continued. Police later arrested a second person at a home for asylum seekers in Solingen, the German news agency DPA reported.
Special police units had joined the search for the knifeman who cut the throats of revelers at a crowded festival to celebrate the city’s 650th anniversary. Four of the people wounded in the attack were in serious condition.
After the attack, German Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck said some tightening of weapons restrictions is necessary. “More weapons-free zones and stricter weapons laws — nobody in Germany needs cutting and stabbing weapons in public. We are no longer living in the Middle Ages,” Habeck said.
Hendrik Wuest, premier of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, described Friday evening’s attack during a festival in the city as an act of terror.
“This attack has struck at the heart of our country,” Wuest told reporters.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said the “full force of the law must be applied” to the Solingen attack. “The perpetrator must be caught quickly and punished to the full extent of the law,” he said in a post on X.
Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said German security authorities “are doing everything they can to catch the perpetrator and determine the background to the attack.”
