Winterthur:
A man reportedly shouting “Allahu akbar!” injured three people in a knife attack at a train station in Switzerland on Thursday before being arrested, in what officials said was “a terrorist act”.
Witnesses described scenes of panic and confusion when the man — who authorities said was a 31-year-old Swiss-Turkish national with a history of psychological problems — suddenly began stabbing people at the main train station in Winterthur, Switzerland’s sixth largest city, during the morning rush hour.
“I am exceptionally calling this a terrorist attack,” Mario Fehr, in charge of security in the Swiss canton of Zurich, told a press conference.
Regional police commander Marius Weyermann agreed, telling reporters it was “clear from the scene that the motive for this act must be sought in the realm of radicalisation and extremism”.
He said police had received the first emergency call at 8:28 am (0628 GMT) and that the suspected perpetrator was arrested by 8:33 am.
The man, identified as Nesip Dedeler, had been wielding a knife and had injured three men, aged 28, 43 and 52.
The eldest man had been seriously injured by stab wounds to his thigh and had undergone emergency surgery, while the two youngest victims had suffered stab wounds to the leg and neck respectively, Weyermann said.
They had both since been released from hospital, he said.
‘Goosebumps’
Images broadcast by several Swiss media outlets and on social media showed a man with long dark hair and a full beard running in front of the station shouting “Allahu akbar!” (God is the greatest), while raising his right hand.
A 65-year-old taxi driver named Turhan Muslu told the Blick newspaper that he witnessed the attack.
“I saw him rush off the ramp and try to stab a man,” he told the daily, adding that the man had “fought back fiercely”, before station guards arrived and subdued the attacker.
“It all happened so fast. If those security guards hadn’t (arrived) so quickly, I don’t know what would have happened.”
In the published footage, filmed from a distance on a mobile phone, the man, wearing a black T-shirt and shorts, is seen running past a group of young children apparently on a school trip, without stopping.
“I heard a man scream ‘Allahu akbar’ five or six times, in a very agitated manner,” a young man who witnessed the chaos that ensued told Blick, which did not provide his name.
The witness described how the young children and other bystanders had “run across the road” in panic.
“I still have goosebumps,” he said.
Psychiatric Hospital
Weyermann said the attacker had grown up in Winterthur, and had faced a complaint more than a decade ago for allegedly violating a ban on spreading propaganda for the Islamic State jihadist group.
He had himself shown up at a Winterthur police station on Monday this week, speaking incoherently, and he had been taken to a psychiatric hospital, the authorities said.
But he had checked himself out from there on Wednesday and the institution had determined he did not pose a danger to himself or others, and let him go, Fehr said.
“Why that decision was made is beyond our knowledge, but the assessment was obviously wrong,” he said
Attacks targeting random passers-by are rare in Switzerland, and people in the city, located 25 kilometres (15 miles) northeast of Zurich, voiced shock at what had unfolded.
“This is not OK. We want peace,” Basharat Iqbal, a taxi driver who arrived at the station after the attack, told AFP.
“I was shocked.”
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