GERMANY: Knife-wielding man attacks people streaming out of a gala ceremony for Berlin's new central rail station injuring up to twenty five, six of them seriously

Record ID: 354223

  • Title: GERMANY: Knife-wielding man attacks people streaming out of a gala ceremony for Berlin's new central rail station injuring up to twenty five, six of them seriously
  • Date: 27th May 2006
  • Summary: MEN STANDING OUTSIDE HOSPITAL BESIDE AMBULANCE
  • Embargoed: 11th June 2006 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Germany
  • Country: Germany
  • Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement
  • Reuters ID: LVABN8DK4SG5HA350FAFEG7BKM3H
  • Story Text: A knife-wielding German teenager attacked people leaving a gala ceremony to dedicate Berlin's new central rail station shortly before midnight on Friday (May 26), injuring 26 before being arrested, police said.
    "Late on late Friday (May 26) evening we got the first emergency phone calls from people telling us that in Luisen Street, here in the middle of Berlin, close to the government, there were injured people in street. So immediately the police and the fire department went there. We have confirmed that there was a man stabbing around twenty people, of them four are badly injured. All of them are in the hospital being treated and we arrested this seventeen year old man," Berlin police spokes person Bernhard Schodrowski said.
    A police spokesman said on Saturday six of the injured were in serious condition.
    The attacker was a 16-year old German from Neukoelln, a south Berlin district with a large immigrant population. Police said they were still investigating the motives of the attack by the youth who has a police record for assault.
    They said they were unsure what was behind the violence but ruled out a far-right link. They also said the teenager had acted on his own.
    The attack occurred a few hundred metres from the showpiece rail station where Chancellor Angela Merkel and Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit had given speeches only hours before.
    Merkel and other dignitaries had left the ceremony before the attack took place. A free concert and light show outside the new station attracted more than a 100,000 people to the area.
    As thousands streamed away from the glass-covered, five-storey "Hauptbahnhof" after the show, police said the young man "ran amok" through the crowd on a street about three blocks to the east of the station.
    The attack took place along a long stretch of crowded sidewalks in the government quarter between the Reichstag parliament building and the Charite hospital.
    The station, which sits near the no-man land where the Berlin Wall once split the city in half, was opened by Merkel in time for the World Cup in two weeks.
    At a news conference on Saturday (May 27) German chancellor Angela Merkel commented on the incident.
    "I think that in Germany, we have never before coordinated our security policies between the Federal Government and the States and as we do now in order to guarantee a maximum level of security. I think that this will be continued until the last day. The incident in Berlin yesterday is terrible. The Berlin police could directly arrest the offender. This, at least, is a comforting message in this terrible incident." Angela Merkel told reporters.
    The stabbing, which follows a string of apparently racially-motivated attacks on dark-skinned people in eastern Germany, may fuel concerns about security at the month-long soccer tournament.
    The 700 million euro ($900 million) station, Europe's largest, dwarfs Merkel's nearby Chancellery and the Reichstag.
    More than 1,100 trains and 300,000 passengers are expected to pass through the station each day.
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