1 dead in Hamburg market knife attack

Suspect known as radical unstable

HAMBURG (AFP) — The suspect who killed a man with a knife in a Hamburg supermarket was a known Islamist with psychological problems but his motives remain unclear, German officials said Saturday.

Identified as a 26-year-old Palestinian, he arrived in Germany in 2015 from Norway but was due to be deported as his application for asylum was rejected.

Friday’s assault risks reopening a bitter debate over refugees two months before general elections, putting pressure on Chancellor Angela Merkel over her decision to open Germany’s borders in 2015 and let in more than a million asylum seekers.

Merkel expressed her sympathies to victims and their families and vowed that “the violent act must be and will be clarified.”

Investigators were still struggling to determine the exact motive for the assault, which left six people injured.

The suspect “was known as an Islamist but not a jihadist,” said the port city’s interior minister Andy Grote, noting “there are indications of radicalization.”

But Grote stressed that while there could have been an Islamist motive, the suspect also suffered from “psychological instability.”

“It remains unclear which was the overriding element,” he said.

The Palestinian suspect is being held but has refused to speak about why he staged the attack, Nana Frombach, the spokeswoman for the local prosecutor’s office said.

Germany’s interior minister Thomas de Maiziere also cautioned against jumping to conclusions.

“The jihadist ideology could be used as a justification for action that may actually be motivated by other reasons,” he said, adding that “the real motives could perhaps lie in the personality of the perpetrator.”

The attacker had entered the supermarket and taken a kitchen knife from the shelves.

“He ripped off the packaging and then suddenly brutally attacked a 50-year-old man who later died,” said deputy police chief Kathrin Hennings.

He later wounded two more men in the supermarket before fleeing, hurting four other people along the way, before he was overpowered by courageous passers-by.