Hamburg knife attacker was born in the UAE: German police

Police investigators work at the area around a supermarket in the northern German city of Hamburg, where a man killed one person and wounded several others in a knife attack, on Friday. (AFP / dpa / Markus Scholz)

HAMBURG: The attacker who killed one person and injured four others in a Hamburg supermarket Friday is a 26-year-old man born in the United Arab Emirates, police said in a statement.
Police added that they have yet to determine the nationality of the perpetrator, who stabbed a 50-year-old man to death and wounded six others.
As a knife-wielding man sought to flee after killing one and injuring several at the supermarket, several passers-by gave chase and tackled him to the ground, said witnesses of the chaotic scenes Friday.
“People ran after the attacker and threw chairs at him,” 18-year-old Shaylin Roettmer told the national news agency DPA.
Police also confirmed that they were alerted to the attack by witnesses, who had given chase and overpowered the as-yet unidentified suspect.
Plainclothes officers were able to capture the man, who was lightly injured.
The man had struck on Friday afternoon at a popular supermarket on a busy high street in the northeast of Hamburg, Germany’s second city and host of early July’s G20 summit of world leaders.
He stormed into the supermarket with a “huge knife,” an unnamed woman told rolling news channel NTV, gesturing to show that the weapon was about 50 centimeters (20 inches) long.
“I thought I was in a horror movie, I thought he would kill me,” she said.
She said she feared she would die, as she was “queueing for the till and couldn’t get away.”
“As he was running out... he held up his arms and shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’,” she added.
On the run, the suspect struck a young girl on the street, another witness told NTV.
Hamburg resident Remo Pollio, meanwhile, told DPA that as the man was running away, “he held up the knife and shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’, he did that twice.”
Ralph Woyna corroborated Pollio’s account.
A police spokeswoman said she was unable to confirm the “Allahu Akbar” (“God is greatest” in Arabic) accounts.
Meanwhile, police helicopters were rattling overhead as officers blocked off the high street.
Officers armed with automatic rifles were also patrolling the streets.
“It was really shocking,” said Omar, who runs a newspaper stand.