German police announced on Saturday that they had fatally injured an Afghan national suspected of having attacked several people, one of whom died on Friday evening in a town in the east of the country.
The suspect notably attacked the participants of a private party gathered to watch the first match of Euro 2024 which is taking place in Germany and mobilizes significant security forces due to the risk of attacks and violence.
The deceased attacker, a 27-year-old Afghan, first allegedly attacked “with an object resembling a knife a 23-year-old Afghan national in a building in Wolmirstedt for reasons still unknown”, indicated the police of the Land of Saxony-Anhalt (north), where the locality is located. The victim succumbed to his injuries.
High security for Euro football
Shortly after 9 p.m., the alleged attacker then entered private property and attacked three other people, seriously injuring a 50-year-old woman and a 75-year-old man and more lightly injuring a 56-year-old man. These three people, of German nationality, were watching the opening match of Euro-2024, between Germany and Scotland, said the daily Bild.
After fleeing, “the attacker then allegedly attacked the emergency services with an object resembling a knife, which is why two police officers used their firearm,” continued the local police, according to which the suspect later died in hospital. “There is currently no evidence of a religiously motivated act or any other motivation,” police said.
The Euro football in Germany, until July 14, is taking place under high security, in a tense geopolitical context due to the war in Ukraine and the conflict between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Expulsion of offenders under study across the Rhine
At the end of May, a knife attack in the center of Mannheim, which cost the life of a 29-year-old police officer and left five injured, caused shock throughout the country. The alleged attacker, a 25-year-old Afghan who arrived in Germany in 2014, attacked several members of an anti-Islam movement in the market square of this city in the west of the country.
Since then, Germany has been studying the possibility of resuming expulsions of offenders to Afghanistan, suspended since the Taliban’s return to power in August 2021.
