BERLIN: A knife attacker in Germany killed a two-year-old child and a man and seriously wounded two others Wednesday, said police, who arrested an Afghan suspect at the scene.
The stabbings happened in a public park in the centre of the Bavarian city of Aschaffenburg at around 11:45 am (1045 GMT), they said.
They are the latest in a series of deadly knife attacks to have shaken Germany in recent months, fuelling concerns over public safety.
The attacker targeted a group of children from a daycare centre who were in the park, German media reported.
“Two people were fatally injured,“ police said, while another two were seriously hurt and receiving treatment in hospital.
The suspect, a 28-year-old man from Afghanistan, was arrested “in the immediate vicinity of the crime scene”.
Police said investigations into the “background of the crime” were ongoing, without indicating a possible motive for the attack.
German media reported that the man was said to have had psychological issues and had received treatment several times.
“There are no indications of other suspects” and no further danger to the public, police said.
A second person held by police was being questioned as a witness.
Authorities had cordoned off the park in Aschaffenburg, around 36 kilometres (22 miles) southeast of Frankfurt in the west of Germany.
Police said train traffic around the scene had been suspended, with services delayed or diverted.
The suspect had tried to flee across the train tracks, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper reported.
Shaken by stabbings
In June last year, a policeman was stabbed to death at an anti-Islam rally in the city of Mannheim, and a man from Afghanistan was arrested on suspicion of carrying out the knife attack.
And in August, three people were killed and eight wounded in a stabbing spree at a street festival in the western city of Solingen.
The attack was claimed by the Islamic State group and police arrested a Syrian suspect.
The presumed Islamist motive behind the stabbing in Solingen, and the fact that the suspect had been slated for deportation, fuelled a bitter debate in Germany over immigration.
The government responded to the incident by tightening controls on knives, circumscribing benefits for asylum seekers and strengthening security services with new powers of investigation.
Wednesday’s attack in Aschaffenburg comes as Germany is in the middle of a campaign ahead of national elections on February 23.
The conservative CDU/CSU alliance currently leads in the polls on around 30 percent, with the far-right, anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) in second with 20 percent.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s centre-left Social Democrats sit third in voter surveys, on around 16 percent.
