Austria stabbing that killed teenager was Islamist attack, minister says

A stabbing that left a teenager dead and five others injured in southern Austria was an Islamist attack, Austria’s interior minister has said.

“It is an Islamist attack with IS connections,” Gerhard Karner told reporters on Sunday in the southern city of Villach, where Saturday’s attack took place, referring to the Islamic State group.

He said the suspect, a 23-year-old Syrian asylum seeker, had been radicalised online “in a short space of time”.

In the city centre attack a man targeted passersby with a folding knife, police said. The man was arrested just after the attack, which was stopped when a fellow Syrian, a food delivery driver, rammed a car into the suspected assailant.

A 14-year-old boy died and five other males were hurt, two of them seriously. Among the wounded are two 15-year-old teenagers, police said.

The suspect is an asylum seeker with a valid residence permit and no criminal record, according to police.

On Sunday, people placed candles in front of shops in the street where the attack took place in the centre of Villach, a city in Carinthia province.

Tanja Planinschek, a local person, said: “I am afraid for my children. I am afraid for those around me. I fear for the future. I fear where this will lead. I am endlessly sad.

“Not only I, but all of us have been afraid for a long time that something bigger will happen,” she said, adding that the country “should open our eyes and see who we let in, who we help, who we leave with all kinds of freedoms. If nothing is done, it will get even worse.”

The food delivery driver who rammed his car into the attacker was slightly hurt, police said.

The Krone tabloid quoted the driver, Alaaeddin Alhalabi, 42, as saying: “I saw a person lying on the ground, a man was attacking other passersby – I didn’t think twice and drove at him.

“He wanted to go towards the city centre, there were children on the street – I couldn’t let that happen,” he said, adding that he regretted he could not save the 14-year-old.

The Carinthia governor, Peter Kaiser of the Social Democrats, called for the “harshest consequences” for this “unbelievable atrocity”.

The far-right leader Herbert Kickl, whose party topped September’s national elections for the first time, said he was “appalled” by the attack and called for “a rigorous clampdown on asylum”.

Kickl’s Freedom party this week failed in talks to form a government with the runner-up and incumbent conservatives because of disagreements including over who would hold sensitive cabinet posts dealing with security.

Austria has a large Syrian refugee population of almost 100,000 people. After Bashar al-Assad was ousted from power in Syria in December, Austria and several European countries froze pending asylum requests from Syrians to reassess the situation.

Austria has also stopped family reunifications and sent at least 2,400 letters to revoke refugee status. The interior ministry has said it is preparing “an orderly repatriation and deportation programme to Syria”.

Austria has previously had one jihadist attack, in 2020, when a convicted IS sympathiser went on a shooting rampage in downtown Vienna, killing four.

On Thursday in Munich, Germany, a man rammed a car into people, killing a two-year-old girl and her mother and wounding 37 other people.

A 24-year-old Afghan asylum seeker was arrested on suspicion of deliberately driving the car into a trade union march. German police said he may have had Islamist extremist motives.