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Solingen, Germany: celebrating the joys of diversity

Deborah Cole – The Guardian Aug 24, 2024

At least three people have been killed and four are seriously wounded, German police have said, after an attack at a festival in the city of Solingen in the country’s west on Friday night.

Police said the weapon was believed to be a knife.

No one has been arrested and police said they had deployed a “large contingent” including a helicopter to search for the male assailant who fled the scene. Police declined to discuss a possible motive or speculate about the identity of the suspect.

Federal health minister Karl Lauterbach said he hoped “rescue teams can save the wounded who are still alive and that police can catch the cowardly and pathetic perpetrator”.

Regional premier Hendrik Wüst, who arrived at the scene early on Saturday, posted earlier on X that “All of North Rhine-Westphalia stands with the people in Solingen, above all with the victims and their families,” he said, expressing “huge thanks to the many rescue workers and our police who are in these minutes fighting for people’s lives”.

The attack happened at an event marking the city’s 650th anniversary and billed as a festival of diversity that began on Friday and was supposed to run through to Sunday. Around 10,000 people attended, many gathering around a stage with live music on the Fronhof market square in the city centre.

Most of those wounded are believed to have been attacked directly front of the stage, the daily Bild reported, adding that the man appeared to target the throats of his victims.

A police spokesperson said emergency services had received several calls at about 9.30pm with witnesses reporting that “an unknown person armed with a knife wounded several people at random”.

“Many witnesses are in a state of shock and are receiving care and giving their statements,” the spokesperson said. “We hope to receive information about the assailant, particularly his appearance, so that we can make the manhunt more targeted.”

He said the information compiled so far was “very thin”. Police set up a website for people to send in footage or information about the attack.

The local Solinger Tageblatt newspaper reported that authorities called on people to leave central Solingen and that one of the festival organisers, Philipp Müller, said on a stage that emergency workers were fighting for the lives of nine people.

Rolling news channel NTV showed a video of Müller asking the crowd not to panic and to be careful leaving the premises because the attacker was still at large.

Witnesses said that people remained calm as they left the scene and media images later showed that the premises were empty apart from police and emergency vehicles. Armed officers were controlling the perimeter.

Solingen has about 160,000 inhabitants and is located near the bigger cities of Cologne and Düsseldorf. Festival organiser Mueller later told the Tageblatt that the rest of the festival would be cancelled. “We’ve just informed all the artists and stand operators,” he said.

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