Suspect arrested in deadly stabbing

BERLIN >> Two people were killed and at least seven others injured in a stabbing on a train in northern Germany on Wednesday afternoon.

The attack happened shortly before 3 p.m. on a regional train traveling from the northern city of Kiel to Hamburg. Just before the train arrived in the town of Brokstedt, about halfway during the journey, a man started randomly stabbing passengers, according witness reports.

It was unclear how exactly how the attack ended. One witness told the news site t-online that he held the assailant after the man had dropped the knife until police could arrest him.

The attacker, whom authorities have identified as a 33-year-old Palestinian man, was arrested at the train station in Brokstedt, 40 miles north of Hamburg. Having been alerted by passengers en route, police were waiting for him when the train pulled in. No more information on the suspect was released. A motive was not immediately clear.

Witnesses described a scene of carnage with blood visible along several train cars. Police officers, who questioned witnesses in Brokstedt, said about 70 people were on the train during the attack.

Nancy Faeser, the federal interior minister responsible public safety, promised a quick investigation. “The background to the crime is now being investigated at full speed,” she said.

The attacker, who was also severely injured and was being treated at a hospital, will be interrogated as soon as he is fit, police said.

“It's quite horrible,” Sabine Sutterlin-Waack, the state minister of the interior for Schleswig-Holstein, where the train stopped, told a public broadcaster. “We are all completely shocked and horrified that something like this has happened.”