Man awaiting deportation stabs shoppers
HAMBURG A 26-year-old migrant to Germany who was supposed to leave the country went on a stabbing spree with a kitchen knife in a Hamburg supermarket yesterday, killing a 50-year-old man and leaving six others injured, police and city officials said.
Passersby threw chairs and other objects at the attacker as he fled, enabling plainclothes police officers to take him into custody near the store.
Police said the man, who was born in the United Arab Emirates, suddenly began attacking customers in the supermarket.
Hamburg Mayor Olaf Scholz said the assailant was ‘‘apparently a foreigner who was supposed to leave the country’’ but could not be deported because he did not have the necessary identification papers. Police said they were still trying to determine his citizenship.
A police spokeswoman said she could not confirm whether the attacker shouted ‘‘Allahu akbar’’, Arabic for ‘‘God is greatest’’, as he ran out of the supermarket, as one REUTERS witness told German broadcaster n-tv.
A police spokeswoman said the motive for the attack was still under investigation. She said she had no information about whether the attacker was known to authorities as an Islamist, as reported by the newspaper Tagesspiegel.
Police said a 50-year-old woman and four men aged between 19 and 64, all of whom were German, were injured in the attack. A 35-year-old Turkish man was also injured while trying to stop the attacker.
Police have been on high alert in Germany since a spate of attacks on civilians last year, including a December truck attack on a Berlin Christmas market that left 12 people dead. The man responsible for that attack was also denied asylum but had not been deported because authorities were waiting for his home country of Tunisia to issue identification papers. Reuters