7 injured in axe attack at German train station
BERLIN -- A man was arrested after injuring seven people with an axe at the main train station in Dusseldorf, Germany in what appeared to be a random attack, police said Thursday.
Officers were alerted about an attack shortly before 9 p.m., prompting a large-scale response.
“A person, probably armed with an ax, attacked people at random,” police said in a statement. Seven people were injured, three of them seriously, police said.
The suspected attacker was arrested after jumping off an overpass near the train station, the statement said. The 36-year-old man, described as being from “the former Yugoslavia” and living in the nearby city of Wuppertal, suffered serious injuries and was being treated in a hospital.
“The suspect appears to have had psychological problems,” police said.
An axe was recovered and officers were searching the area in and around the station, which was closed for the investigation. Police withdrew an earlier report that a second person had been arrested, saying later that they were working on the assumption the man had acted alone.
The motivation for the attack is unclear, CBS News correspondent Mark Phillips reported from London. No fatalities were reported.
German authorities have heightened security measures following a series of attacks in public places over the past year.
In one attack last July, a 17-year-old Afghan asylum-seeker traveling on a train near Wuerzburg injured five people with an axe and a knife before being shot dead by police. The attack was later claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
