German police named the attack on Solingen as terrorist, victims stabbed in the neck

Police said the weapon is suspected of being a knife. No arrests were made as police announced they had deployed a major <x0-contigence”, including a helicopter, to search for the male attacker who left the scene.

The man reportedly stabbed the victims in the neck. Because of this, investigators describe crime as a terrorist attack and no longer as a common attack, according to Bild.

Federal Health Minister Carl Lauterbach said he hoped the <x0 rescue teams could save the wounded who are still alive and that police can capture the coward and miserable author”.

The regional prime minister, Hendrik Wüst, who arrived at the scene early Saturday, announced to X that “all North Reich-Westphalia stands with people in Solingen, above all with their victims and families”, he said, expressing a great “gratitude for our many rescuers and police fighting for human life in these minutes<3>.

The local newspaper Solinger Tageblat reported that authorities had asked people to leave the centre of Solingen and that one of the festival organisers, Philip Mueller, said on the scene that emergency workers were fighting for the lives of nine people.

NTV news channel showed a video in which Mueller asks the crowd not to panic and leave the area carefully because the attacker is still at large.

The Witnesses said that people remained calm as they left the scene and media images later showed empty facilities, besides police and an ambulance. Armed police officers searched the perimeter.

Solingen has about 160 thousand inhabitants and is located near the largest cities of Koln and Dusseldorf.

The attack came amid a fierce political debate over increasing knife violence in German cities.

In May, German police shot and wounded a man who injured six people in a knife attack on right-wing protests in the southwestern town of Manheim. Among the victims was a 29-year-old policeman who was stabbed to death. /Telegraphy/