Germany: Home-made Isis flag found in axe-attacker’s bedroom

Hong Kong family left injured after the 17-year-old attacked them on train with axe

Emergency vehicles at a road block in Wuerzburg, Germany, 18th July 2016 after a teenager wielding an axe injured multiple passengers on a regional train in Wuerzburg. The attacker was shot by police. Photograph: Karl-Josef Hildenbran/EPA

German police have found a home-made IS flag in the bedroom of a 17 year-old Afghan teenager shot dead on Monday night after he attacked train passengers with an axe.

A family from Hong Kong were injured, two seriously, during the attack, which took place around 9.15pm local time near the city of Würzburg in Bavaria’s northern region of Franconia.

According to one passenger on the train the attacker shouted “Allahu Akbar” (God is greatest) before launching into attacks, and police say they cannot rule out an Islamist background.

After passengers hit the emergency brake on the train in Würzburg’s Heidingsfeld neighbourhood, the 17-year-old fled the train.

Special forces instructed residents around the emergency stop station not to leave their homes. They found the 17-year-old around 500 metres from the train. When police surrounded and approached him he reportedly tried to attack them with his weapons and was hit “with several shots from service weapons”.

The victims are all originally from Hong Hong: a 62-year-old man, his 58 year-old wife, their 27-year-old daughter and a 31 year-old man. The final victim is a local resident who was attacked when the man fled the train.

According to eye witnesses, the father and the younger man tried to protect the two women from the attack. A fifth member of the group, a 17-year-old son, was unharmed.

The perpetrator was a 17-year-old unaccompanied minor from Afghanistanwho had lived in Germany since March, first in an asylum home and in the last two weeks with a foster family in Ochsenfurt.

Police said the young man attacked passengers on the train without provocation. Eye-witnesses said he slashed around himself wildly and left behind “lots of blood” before fleeing the train.

“It looked like a slaughterhouse,” said one local man, who had seen the train, to the DPA news agency.

Of around 25 passengers on the train at the time of the attack, around 14 were treated for shock.

The four injured passengers were brought to nearby Würzburg hospital, where two are still in a critical condition.

In response to the attack, Germany’s EVG train union has demanded better on-board protection from such attacks. Two months ago, also in Bavaria, a mentally ill man killed a 56 year-old man and seriously injured three others.

Bavarian police said they assumed the man had acted alone.

“This all has to be put together like a large mosaic,” said Mr Joachim Hermann, Bavarian interior minister. “In particular the motivation and how far it can be attributed to Islamist territory or how he radicalised himself.”