At least six people, including a three-year-old girl, were treated for eye and respiratory irritation after two young attackers sprayed tear gas into a train car full of passengers. It comes less than a day after an attack at Dusseldorf train station.
Police in the northern German city of Hamburg have staged a manhunt for two youngsters, believed to be responsible for a Friday evening gas attack on the S-Bahn rapid transit train on its way from the city’s main railway station toward the station of Sternschanze , Germany’s dpa news agency reported. At the time of the incident, which happened at around 18:55 local time, the train’s car was packed with some 50 passengers.
“The recordings of the surveillance cameras have been obtained. Investigations are continuing,” police spokesman Rüdiger Carstens said, according to Bild.
The passengers were able to escape the car only after the train stopped at Sternschanze, leaving many of them gasping for fresh air.
Six people have displayed symptoms of respiratory and eye irritation and have received first aid at the scene. However, all of them refused to be hospitalized, according to the spokesman for the fire brigade, which was called to the scene.
At least one child was among those injured in the attack, police said, who put the number of the victims at three.
A touching image capturing a fireman comforting a three-year-old girl by presenting her with an improvised balloon in the aftermath of the attack was published by Bild’s Thomas Knoop and has been since extensively shared on Twitter.
While the firefighters’ unit was attending the scene, the operation of the S-Bahn train system was temporary suspended.
The incident follows a spate of violent, bizarre attacks in the German cities of Dusseldorf and Magdeburg. The attacks have been extensively covered in the German media amid rising safety concerns.
On Thursday, a mentally ill 36-year-old man from the former Yugoslavia armed with an ax went on the rampage at Dusseldorf’s main train station, injuring nine people. The attacker was arrested following a massive police operation and turned out to be a resident of the nearby German town of Wupertal. Authorities found no other motive in the man’s actions than his unstable mental state.
The media hype around Thursday’s attack was still ongoing when an incident of an equally strange nature took place in the city’s Kaiserswerth district on Friday. An unidentified attacker, who is still believed to be on the run, allegedly injured an 80-year-old man, who suffered cuts and is being treated in the hospital.
Later, it was revealed that another ax attack took place in the city of Magdeburg in eastern Germany on Thursday evening, during which two suspected attackers smashed a 29-year-old man’s car with a baseball bat and an ax, inflicting “light injuries” on the victim. Police have already launched proceedings against one of the suspects, who was identified as a 34-year-old local resident by police.
It was not clear if the attacks were somehow connected.