Shorouk Express
A man has been seriously injured in a stabbing attack at Berlin’s Holocaust memorial two days before a watershed national election.
Berlin police arrested a suspect on Friday evening, shortly after the assault on the northern side of the vast field of 2,700 grey concrete slabs, across the street from the US embassy.
“Our forces have detained a suspect in the vicinity of the crime scene,” city police posted on X, giving no details on his identity or possible motive. “Investigations continue.”
About three hours after the attack, an Associated Press photographer witnessed a man claiming to be the culprit surrender to officers. The man appeared to be in his late 20s, and police held him face-down to the ground as they took him into custody.
Police spokesperson Florian Nath said the victim was rushed to hospital by the fire brigade after he was seriously injured in the incident at around 6pm local time (5pm UK time). However, the victim’s life was not in danger and he was being prepared for surgery, Nath added.
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An eyewitness told local broadcaster RBB24 that the two men had appeared to approach each other before the victim was suddenly stabbed.
Video of the scene in the city centre, near the Brandenburg Gate, showed emergency vehicles and heavily armoured police lined along one side of the 1.9 hectare (4.7 acres) memorial site, which had been sealed off.
Police were collecting forensic material at the site, Nath said. Specialist fire brigade officers were offering trauma counselling to the witnesses.
The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, one of the German capital’s most sacred sites, commemorates the six million Jews murdered by Adolf Hitler’s Nazis during World War Two, one of the darkest episodes in human history and a continuing focus of German historical atonement.
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The stabbing comes two days before Germans vote in a national election on Sunday, with the campaign marred by a series of high-profile attacks.
Polls suggest a far-right party could come in second place for the first time in nine decades.
One of the recent attacks was a stabbing in which two were killed, including a toddler, which was blamed on an Afghan immigrant. That prompted a fraught debate on immigration and demands from the front-runner conservatives for the border to be closed.
In December, a Saudi man who had lived in Germany for years and whose posting history showed he sympathised with the far-right, rammed a Christmas market with a car, killing six, including a child, and injuring hundreds.
Earlier on Friday, an 18-year-old ethnic Chechen was arrested on suspicion of planning an attack on the Israeli Embassy in Berlin, Bild newspaper reported.
