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Twelve injured after woman stabs people at Hamburg train station Twelve injured after woman stabs people at Hamburg train station
(about 2 hours later)
Police say six victims critically wounded in attack by 39-year-old assailant in the German cityPolice say six victims critically wounded in attack by 39-year-old assailant in the German city
Twelve people have been wounded – six critically – after a woman with a knife stabbed people at the central railway station in the German city of Hamburg. German police have arrested a woman after at least 12 people were injured in a knife attack at the main station in the northern city of Hamburg.
Police said the assailant was a 39-year-old woman who was believed to have acted alone when she attacked people on the platform between tracks 13 and 14 in the station late on Friday. Some of the injured sustained life-threatening injuries in the stabbing, emergency services said, although the exact number remained unclear.
Hamburg’s fire service said six people sustained life-threatening injuries, while another three were seriously injured and three had slight injuries, the German news agency dpa reported. Around 6:30pm local time (5:30pm BST), Hamburg police said on X they were carrying out a major operation at the main train station in Germany’s second-largest city.
The station in Hamburg, Germany’s second-biggest city, is a major hub for local, regional and long-distance trains. Police cordoned off part of the complex. “A person injured several people with a knife at the main train station” and a suspect had been arrested, they said.
More details soon … The suspect, police subsequently said, was a 39-year-old woman who was thought to have “acted alone”.
Police later said there was no sign of a political motive in the attack.
“We have no evidence so far that the woman may have had a political motive,” local police spokesperson Florian Abbenseth told journalists at the scene, in comments broadcast by ARD public television. Police were instead pursuing the theory that the suspect may have “been experiencing a psychological emergency”.
A spokesperson for the Hamburg fire department said 12 people had been injured in the knife attack.
Among them were “six people with life-threatening injuries”, the they said. German media however reported the number of people with very severe injuries was lower.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s office said the German leader was appalled by the news and told Hamburg mayor Peter Tschentscher in a call Friday evening that “my thoughts are with the victims and their relatives”.”
The attack took place around 6:00pm in the middle of rush hour at the end of the working week, according to German media.
The suspect was thought to have carried out the attack “against passengers” at the station, a spokesperson for the Hanover federal police directorate, which also covers Hamburg, told AFP.
Images of the scene showed access to the platforms at one end of the station blocked off by police and people being loaded into waiting ambulances.
Some of the victims in the attack were being treated onboard waiting trains in the station, Bild reported.
German rail operator Deutsche Bahn said on X that four platforms at the station had been closed.
The incident would lead to “delays and diversions in long-distance services”, the rail operator said in a post on X.
Germany has been rocked in recent months by a series of violent attacks with often jihadist or far-right extremist motivations that have put security at the top of the agenda.
In the most recent attack, four people were injured in a stabbing at a bar in the city of Bielefeld on Sunday.