Police say four victims face life-threatening injuries, suggest suspect may have have suffered a ‘psychological emergency’.
Authorities in Germany have arrested a woman charged with stabbing at least 18 people at the main train station in the northern city of Hamburg.
The 39-year-old German woman appeared before a judge on Saturday, as police continued to investigate the knife attack during Friday evening’s rush hour, which left at least four of the victims with life-threatening injuries.
“We have no evidence so far that the woman may have had a political motive,” police spokesman Florian Abbenseth told journalists on Friday.
“Rather, we have information, based on which we now want to investigate, whether she may have been experiencing a psychological emergency.”
The suspect was thought to have “acted alone”, Hamburg police said in a post on X.
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.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz expressed his shock in a call with the mayor of Hamburg following the attack.
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Germany has been rocked in recent months by a series of violent attacks that have put security at the top of the agenda.
The most recent, on May 18, saw four people injured in a stabbing at a bar in the city of Bielefeld. The investigation into that attack had been handed over to federal prosecutors following the arrest of the suspect, who is from Syria.
The question of security – and the immigrant origin of some of the attackers – was a major topic during Germany’s recent election campaign.
The February vote saw Merz’s conservative CDU/CSU party top the vote as well as a record score of more than 20 percent for the far-right, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany.
