BBC News
Eighteen people were injured in a knife attack at the main railway station in the German city of Hamburg on Friday evening, police said.
Hamburg police said on Saturday that four of the victims who had sustained life-threatening injuries were in a stable condition.
Officers arrested a 39-year-old German woman at the scene of the attack, which took place at about 18:00 local time (16:00 GMT) on Friday.
Police said there was “very concrete evidence” of mental illness in the suspect, and no evidence the attack was politically motivated.
The woman remains in police custody and is scheduled to appear in court on Saturday.
The attack happened between platforms 13 and 14 – which are accessible via a busy main road – while a train was on one of the platforms.
The suspect began stabbing people waiting for the train, but was stopped by the “rapid intervention” of two people on the platform as well as emergency services, police said.
The victims range in age from 19 to 85. Seven people were slightly injured, seven seriously injured, and four critically injured, police said.
The critically injured – a 24-year-old female, 24-year-old male, 52-year-old female, and an 85-year-old female – were stable as of Saturday.
Police said on Saturday that after further investigations, there was still no evidence the attack was politically motivated.
“Rather, there is now very concrete evidence of a mental illness on the part of the suspect,” it said, adding there was no evidence that the woman was under the influence of drugs or alcohol.
An investigation by homicide division into the incident is ongoing.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said the attack was “shocking” and thanked the emergency services on the ground for “their rapid assistance”.
German rail operator Deutsche Bahn said on Friday evening that four platforms at the station were closed and some services would experience delays and diversions.
Pictures from the scene show a number of emergency service personnel and vehicles on the ground, and barriers that seem to be hiding the injured from public view.
A video on social media appears to show the suspect with her hands behind her back being escorted out of the station platform by officers who put her in a police vehicle.
Hamburg’s central station is one of Germany’s busiest transport hubs, with more than 550,000 travellers per day, according to its website. It is often crowded during Friday rush hour.
This is the latest in a series of violent attacks in Germany in recent months.
In January, a two-year-old boy and a 41-year-old man were killed in a stabbing in a park in Aschaffenburg, with several others hurt.
A Spanish tourist was stabbed just a month later at Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial.
Last December, six people were killed and hundreds were injured after a car drove into a crowd at a Christmas market in the eastern city of Magdeburg.
The suspects in these previous attacks were migrants, which has led Germany to tighten border control checks and saw immigration become a key issue for voters during the country’s federal elections in February.
