03-07-2025
German train passengers overpower Syrian axeman
Passengers on a high-speed train in Bavaria fought and overpowered a man after he started attacking people with an axe.
The suspect, reportedly a Syrian citizen, lashed out at travellers on the German intercity train, which was en route to Austria on Thursday afternoon.
One of the passengers managed to take the weapon and use it to stop the attacker, according to the German tabloid Bild.
After passengers pulled the train's emergency brake, police arrested the suspect, who was said to have been seriously injured.
Three passengers received moderate injuries while a fourth was lightly injured.
Sohrab Taheri-Sohi, a spokesman for the Bavarian Red Cross, said: 'Due to a violent incident on an intercity train, there was a large deployment of emergency responders.
'According to our current information, multiple people were injured – one seriously injured, three moderately injured and one lightly injured.'
Around 500 passengers were on board at the time of the attack.
Mass stabbing or car-ramming attacks have become increasingly common in Germany, with many committed by mentally ill people or asylum seekers facing deportation orders.
In May, a mentally ill German woman injured 17 people in a knife attack outside Hamburg Central railway station.
In February, an Afghan asylum seeker crashed his car into a crowd of people taking part in a trade union march in Munich. It was the day before the Munich Security Conference, which was attended by world leaders.
Last September, a Syrian refugee killed three people and injured eight others in a stabbing attack on a festival celebrating diversity in the western city of Solingen.
The train attack came after Austrian authorities said they had deported a convicted Syrian criminal back to Syria on Thursday, in what they described as the first such case since the fall of the Assad regime in December last year.
According to Krone, an Austrian newspaper, the deported Syrian is a 32-year-old 'fanatic' with links to Islamic State. Before being deported, he was serving a seven-year prison sentence. The newspaper cited Austrian intelligence sources, who said they could not give further details of the nature of his crimes for 'security reasons'.
The interior ministry said the removal of the unnamed man was part of a 'strict and thus fair asylum policy'.
Gerhard Karner, the interior minister from Austria's centre-Right Austrian People's Party (OVP), vowed to 'continue this chosen path with hard work and determination'.
Since the fall of the Assad regime, some EU countries have been eager for refugees to return to Syria.
Britain, among other European countries, paused the processing of new asylum claims from Syrians, based on the view that Syria would become safer under its new president, the rebel leader Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa.
Austria took the same step and also stopped family reunifications. Around 100,000 Syrians live in the country, one of the biggest concentrations in Europe, while nearly a million Syrians live in neighbouring Germany.
Austria's government, sworn in last March, consists of the centre-Right OVP and the centre-Left Social Democratic Party.
Both factions are under intense political pressure to get tougher on migration, having come second and third place behind the far-Right Austrian Freedom Party (FPO) in last September's elections.
Despite coming first place in the polls, FPO failed to form a coalition government after the result, as Austria's other political parties considered it too extreme to govern.
Herbert Kickl, the leader of FPO, is sympathetic towards Russia and controversially once called for asylum seekers to be 'concentrated in one place', in what critics said was a deliberate allusion to Nazi camps. Mr Kickl strongly denies this.
The FPO was founded in 1956 and first led by Anton Reinthaller, a former SS cavalry officer and Nazi minister.
