German police kill man who attacked train passengers with ax

BERLIN — Multiple people were injured Monday night when a man attacked them with an ax on a train in southern Germany before being shot to death by police.

The dpa news agency reported that Wuerzburg police said Monday that the man attacked passengers on a regional train in Bavaria with “blunt and slashing” weapons and several people possibly had life-threatening injuries.

They would not comment on German media reports that the man had attacked passengers with an ax.

The Bavarian Interior Ministry confirmed media reports that police had shot and killed the attacker.

Further details were not immediately available.

In May a German man who officials said had drug and psychological problems stabbed to death one person and slashed three more in a bloody attack at a railway station.

Police arrested the 27-year-old after the apparently random assault at the commuter railway station of the small town of Grafing, east of Munich.

One of the victims, a 56-year-old man, later died of his wounds in hospital.

Police and prosecutors initially said the attack appeared to be “politically motivated” and with an apparent Islamist motive after eyewitnesses had reported hearing him scream “Allahu akbar” (God is great).

But Bavaria state’s interior ministry later said that “so far we have no evidence for an Islamist motive.”