One dead as man shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ attacks four at train station in Grafing, Germany

Town mayor Angelika Obermayr has expressed her shock at the bloody crime in her sleepy town of 13,000 people.

“We are an absolutely peaceful Bavarian small town in the greater Munich region,” she said on NTV.

“Something like this is absolutely new and has deeply shocked the people here who only know things like that from television.

“That something like that happened here is absolutely unbelievable.”

It appears increasingly likely that the Munich knife attacker was suffering from psychological problems, writes Justin Huggler.

The 27-year-old, who has been named as Paul H, was known to the police for drug abuse and “mental disorders”, Joachim Herrmann, the Bavarian state interior minister, told reporters.

Police stopped him recemtly because he was behaving abnormally, but took no further action, he said.

According to unconfirmed reports he was stopped on Sunday at a techno music festival. He was in possession of drugs at the time, and had consumed a “massive” quantity.

An eyewitness has described the attack to Bild newspaper.

“I heard screams, I saw a man lying on the ground, begging a man who stood over him. ‘I love God, I love Allah,’ he was saying, obviously to save himself,” the newspaper quoted the witness, who has not been named, as saying.

Paul H was wearing “blood-soaked socks” he said. “I have no idea where his shoes were. As he walked away, the man on the floor pointed to him and whimpered: ‘That guy stabbed me in the back!'”

Bavaria’s top security official says investigators have no indications that the suspect in a stabbing at a train station had an Islamic extremist motive.

Joachim Herrmann, state interior minister, said after a Cabinet meeting in Munich that the 27-year-old has confessed to carrying out the attack, news agency dpa reported.

He said investigators have no indication so far that there was an Islamic extremist motive though they are still looking at whether there’s a political background.

Reports have emerged that the attacker may have been a drug addict and suffered from psychiatric issues, reports Justin Huggler in Berlin.

He was undergoing treament for his addiction, according to Holger Schmidt, a terrorism expert for Germany’s ARD television.

Police have reportedly found traces of drugs in a container at the scene.

Although the attacker has yet to be officially idenitfied, German news reports are now naming him as Paul H, 27, a resident of the town of Giessen in the central German state of Hesse.

He does not appear to have an immigrant background.

“He’s German. That’s all we know,” Angelika Obermayr, the local mayor, told Bild.

According to reports, he was barefoot at the time of the attack and the bloody footprints seen in pictures of the station are his.

The attack appears to have begun inside a train while it was standing at the station.

The first victim was a 50-year-old passenger on the train, who has since died of his wounds in hospital.

The attacker then ran out of the train onto the platform.

“I’ll stab you all,” he shouted, according to eyewitnesses, as well as “You infidels!” and “Allahu akbar!”

One witness told Sueddeutchse Zeitung newspaper the train driver intervened at one point, and tried to beat the man off with a fire extinguisher.

Prosecutors say they have “no concrete information” that the man had any connections to Islamic extremists, and there is no evidence of any link to Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil).

One of the injured is still in critical condition, according to the Bavarian authorities.

Grafing mayor Angelika Obermayr says that “something like this is absolutely new and shakes people deeply – otherwise, they only know this kind of thing from television.”

She added: “That it could happen here is absolutely stupefying.”

She described Grafing as “an absolutely peaceful little Bavarian town.”

Elsewhere in Europe today, Italian police have arrested two Afghan men on suspicion of planning to carry out terrorist attacks in Britain and Italy, including targets in London and the Colosseum in Rome.

The two men, named as Hakim Nasiri, 23, and Gulistan Ahmadzai, 29, were arrested in the southern city of Bari, on the Adriatic coast, writes Nick Squires in Rome.

Nasiri was arrested on terrorism charges while Ahmadzai was detained on charges of aiding illegal immigration.

Police are searching for three other suspects involved in the same alleged plot.

Police found photos and videos of Rome and London on the suspects’ mobile phones, including images of the Colosseum and the Circus Maximus – Rome’s ancient chariot racing arena and a venue for concerts and sports events.

In London, they had allegedly photographed apartments, a health centre, restaurants and a hotel at West India Quay; the Sunborn Yacht Hotel in Royal Victoria Dock, a luxury hotel inside a yacht; the South Quay footbridge to Canary Wharf; and an Ibis hotel in Victoria Dock Road.

Police claim the men had a long list of potential targets, including airports, ports, shopping centres and hotels.

Further details have emerged about the attacker’s identity, writes Justin Huggler.

A spokesman for the Bavarian police told Welt newspaper he was born in Germany and does not have an immigrant background.

The spokesman confirmed reports the 27-year-old was a resident of Hesse state in central Germany.

Spiegel magazine has named the attacker as Paul H, a resident of Hesse state in central Germany. His identity has not been confirmed by police, and the magazine did not give his full name in accordance with German privacy laws. Police have confirmed he is a 27-year-old German citizen.

Hesse has a large Muslim population, mainly in and around the city of Frankfurt, Germany’s financial capital. Further details remain unclear.

The perpetrator shouted “You infidels!” at commuters as he attacked them with a knife with a four-inch blade, according to Bild newspaper.

The incident began on board a train, where he attacked one passenger. He then attacked several others on the station platform, including two cyclists and a man delivering newspapers.

The attack follows a number of recent terror alerts in Germany, writes Justin Huggler in Berlin.

Police sealed off central Munich’s main train station and another suburban station just before midnight on New Year’s Eve, saying they had received information about a concrete threat. Little has emerged about that incident, and it remains unclear whether the police action foiled an imminent attack that night. Almost five months later, no arrests have been made and no suspects have been identified.

In a similar incident in Hannover last November, an international football match against the Netherlands was called off 90 minutes before kick-off after security forces reportedly received a tip-off about a plot to detonate multiple bombs inside the stadium. The match had been billed as a gesture of defiance against the Paris attacks, and Angela Merkel was due to attend. Again, no arrests have been made, and no suspects have been named.

A 50-year-old has died of his wounds in hospital. The others wounded were all men aged 43, 55 and 58.

This is Germany’s third knife attack with an apparent Islamist motivation since September.

In February a 15-year-old girl identified as Safia S. stabbed a policeman in the neck with a kitchen knife in what prosecutors later said was an Isil-inspired attack.

She attacked the officer during a routine check at Hanover train station in the country’s north before being overpowered by another police officer.

Federal prosecutors later said the teenager had “embraced the radical jihadist ideology of the foreign terrorist group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria” and was in contact with an Isil fighter in Syria.

Last September a 41-year-old Iraqi man identified as Rafik Y. stabbed and seriously wounded a policewoman in Berlin before another officer shot him dead.

The man had previously spent time in jail for membership of a banned Islamist group and had been convicted in 2008 of planning an attack in Berlin against former Iraqi prime minister Iyad Allawi.

One man was killed and three people were injured in a knife attack by a suspected Islamic extremist at a German train station early on Tuesday morning.

Police confirmed the attacker shouted “Allahu akbar” and said they believed the incident was “politically motivated”, according to Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper.

The attack took place very early in the morning, at around 4.50am local time (3.50am BST), at a small rural train station around 20 miles from Munich, suggesting it was more likely to be the work of a “lone wolf” than a planned terror attack.

Police identified the attacker as a 27-year-old German citizen who was not from Munich or the surrounding area.

Grafing station, the scene of the attack, is part of the Munich S-Bahn network of commuter trains.

“The idea that people get on he S-Bahn or deliver newspapers on a beautiful morning and then become victims of a maniac is terrible,” said Angelika Obermayr, the local mayor. “I am most grateful to the police, doctors, paramedics and firefighters who arrived quickly on the scene.”

Those injured in the attack have been identified as three men in their 40s and 50s. One was seriously injured, while the others suffered less severe wounds.

A spokesman for the prosecutor’s office said the 27-year-old “assailant made remarks at the scene of the crime that indicate a political motive – apparently an Islamist motive,” said the spokesman.

“We are still determining what the exact remarks were.”

Police spokesman Karl-Heinz Segerer said on n-tv television that the suspected assailant is a 27-year-old German national who doesn’t live in Bavaria.

A man attacked passengers with a knife at a train station in the Munich area in southern Germany early on Tuesday, leaving one man dead and three people with life-threatening injuries, Bavarian radio reported.

Police were checking witness statements that the man shouted “Allahu Akbar” (God is Great) during the attack, which occurred around 5am, Bayerischer Rundfunk reported.

German media said police had arrested the alleged perpetrator and that the victims were men. Police were not immediately reachable for comment when contacted by Reuters.

The attack took place in the S-Bahn commuter train station at Grafing, a town about 32 km (20 miles) southeast of the Bavarian capital in southern Germany.