German police arrest man suspected of killing three people in Solingen

Police in Germany have arrested a man suspected of killing three people in a knife attack on Friday night in the western city of Solingen.

“The man we’ve really been looking for the whole day has just been taken into custody,” Herbert Reul, the interior minister of North Rhine-Westphalia state, told ARD public TV late on Saturday.

Reul gave no further details but the Bild and Spiegel news websites reported that the suspect had given himself up.

The daily newspaper Bild said the man was covered in blood when he approached officers just after 11 pm local time and said, “I’m the one you’re looking for.”

He had reportedly been hiding in a backyard in the city since the crime took place.

The news magazine Spiegel reported that the suspect is a 26-year-old Syrian national who came to Germany in 2022 and applied for asylum in Bielefeld.

The arrest comes after the so-called Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack.

In a statement published on its Amaq news site earlier on Saturday, the group said the attack had been carried out ‘to avenge Muslims in Palestine and everywhere.’

The three people who died were two men aged 67 and 56 and a 56-year-old woman, authorities said. Police said the attacker appeared to have deliberately aimed for his victims’ throats.

People alerted police shortly after 9:30 p.m. local time on Friday to an unknown attacker who had wounded several people after stabbing indiscriminately in downtown Solingen.

Solingen was hosting the ‘Festival of Diversity’ to mark the 650th anniversary of the city. It was supposed to run until Sunday but the event has since been called off.

Solingen has about 160,000 residents and is located near the bigger cities of Cologne and Düsseldorf.