German city holds memorial for victims of deadly knife attack

By AP 27 June 2021, 6:22 pm

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BERLIN — The German city of Wuerzburg holds a memorial service for the victims of a brutal knife attack that left three women dead, while questions about the possible motive of the assailant remain unanswered.

Friday’s assault in and outside a store in the center of the Bavarian city left another five people seriously injured. The suspect, a 24-year-old Somali man, was shot in the leg by police and arrested after people surrounded him and tried to hold him at bay with chairs and sticks.

Investigators are still working to figure out what was behind the attack by what they believe was a lone assailant. They are assessing his mental health and trying to determine whether he was radicalized as an Islamic extremist. It’s unclear whether he deliberately targeted women.

“We are all affected, because it could have happened to anyone,” Wuerzburg’s Catholic bishop, Franz Jung, says at the service in the city’s cathedral. It is attended by relatives of victims, the regional Protestant bishop, a representative of the city’s Muslim communities, Germany’s main Jewish leader, Bavaria’s political leaders, and police and rescue officers.

Bavaria’s governor Markus Soeder, left, and the mayor of Wuerzburg, Christian Schuchardt, attend a memorial service in Wuerzburg, Germany, June 27, 2021. (Karl-Josef Hildenbrand/dpa via AP)

Mayor Christian Schuchardt warns that “the crimes of individuals should never be ascribed or extended to ethnic groups, religions or nationalities,” adding that Somalis and refugees in general must not be blamed.

Flowers are piled up outside the nearby store where the attack started. Bavaria’s governor, Markus Soeder, lays a wreath and describes the attack as “simply incomprehensible, appalling, senseless.”

“We must never answer such a hate-filled deed with hatred or revenge,” Soeder says. “I’m reading on the internet that some are saying, ‘it was someone with an immigrant background.’ Yes, but didn’t people with an immigrant background also help in exactly the same situation?”

The suspect was sent to jail yesterday pending a possible indictment. The regional criminal police office said today prison officials have been informed that he could be a danger to himself, news agency dpa reports.