A Syrian asylum seeker who said the Austrian authorities said they had killed a teenager and injured five other people in a knife attack in Villach, Austria was inspired by the Islamic State militant group, announced on Sunday managers.
The man, who was detained after the attack on Saturday, had been radicalized online, said the Minister of the Interior of Austria, Gerhard Karner. Police said they had thought that the victims had been chosen at random.
The suspect was 23 years old, came to Austria from Syria in 2020 and then received asylum, according to the Ministry of the Interior.
The attack comes a few days after an Afghan citizen, who came to Germany as a refugee, led a car to a crowd of people during a union march in Munich, 150 miles of Villach, killing two people and injuring almost 40 years.
In July, singer Taylor Swift was forced to cancel three concerts in Vienna, the capital of Austria, after the authorities learned a plan to attack the place of two adolescents who had become radicalized Islamists online. Neither a refugee.
The Austria’s far -right freedom party took advantage of the fears of foreigners, in particular young male asylum seekers. Campected on a slogan of “Fortress Austria”, the party arrived first in the elections last year, with 29% of the votes. Last week, he gave up his quest to form a power coalition in the Austria’s current parliament, but his popularity continues to increase, according to polls.
The attack of Villach, a picturesque city in the south near the Italian and Slovenian borders, occurred around 4 p.m. on Saturday on the old town of the city, where a man started stabbing people at random with a Folding knife, said Villach police.
In the seven minutes between the moment when the police received the first call and the time he was arrested, the man killed a 14-year-old and injured five other people, they said.
The attack was finally arrested by a 42 -year -old Syrian citizen who saw the violence unfold, according to the authorities.
“A witness saw the event and decided to intervene – he struck the author with his car and therefore probably prevented worse things from happening,” said Michaela Kohlweiss, director of the State Police who is in charge of the survey.
Two officers were able to hold back and stop the suspect immediately afterwards.
Police briefly believed that there was a second attacker involved and brought additional forces, the Austrian equivalent of the Swat teams and two helicopters. But the authorities now believe that the suspect acted alone.
The police said on Sunday that the suspect did not have a police file and had not been monitored by domestic information.
However, when the police searched his apartment, they found clear evidence of “Islamist thought” and Islamic State flags hanging on the walls, they said, but no weapons or explosives.
Police said they were still investigating the history and motivation of the suspect, and that it seemed to have become radicalized online in a very short period.
Peter Kaiser, governor of the center-left of Carinthia, called the “hardest consequences” for the attacker, saying on social networks that the aggressor “must be judged, imprisoned and expelled”. Herbert Kickl, the head of brand of the Freedom Party, described the attack on “failure of the first order system”.
The mayor of the city, Günther Albel, wrote on social networks: “To all those who are hate and violence, I say: you will not win.”
Millions of Syrians have sought refuge in Europe, especially in Austria, after a popular uprising against the country’s longtime leader in the country, Bashar al-Assad, which began in 2011 and turned into a civil war. The large number of arrivals has set the social security nets in Europe and aroused concerns about assimilation, which has sometimes taken an openly xenophobic form and provided an opening for right -wing nationalist political movements.
The collapse of the Assad regime in December prompted several European countries to suspend legal proceedings on the asylum status of Syrians. Austria said it was planning to expel the Syrians whose asylum claims fail.
Violence is relatively rare in Austria, which was classified as the fifth country of Safe in the world in 2023, according to the World peace index.
