Boy, 14, stabbed to death as five attacked in Austria
A man has stabbed five people in southern Austria, including a 14-year-old boy who has died from his injuries.
The 23-year-old man attacked five passersby in Villach on Saturday afternoon, according to police.
Officers said the suspect is a Syrian national with legal residence in Austria and has been detained.
The damage would likely have been even worse had a nearby driver not spotted the attacker and driven into him, police said.
Police spokesperson Rainer Dionisio said the attacker was “observed by a witness – a food delivery driver saw it and rammed him with his vehicle, and at the moment it looks like he was thus able to prevent him from causing further damage”.
The victims were all male and aged between 14 and 32, and it is unclear if they were known to the attacker. Two were seriously injured and two sustained minor injuries, and the teenager died, police said.
Mr Dionisio said they had not yet determined a motive but were investigating the suspect’s background.
“We have to wait until we get secure information,” he said.
The weekend attack shocked people in the city of Villach, a southern town in the province of Carinthia, which borders Italy and Slovenia.
Such attacks are very rare in Austria. A jihadist killed four people in Vienna in a shooting rampage in 2020 that was the country’s deadliest assault in decades.
Asylum applications have also been falling recently, down from more than 100,000 in 2022 to 59,000 in 2023.
The far-right Freedom Party quickly seized on the Villach attack, saying: “We need a rigorous crackdown on asylum and cannot continue to import conditions like those in Villach”.
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Carinthia governor Peter Kaiser expressed his sympathy for the family of the teenage boy who was killed.
“This outrageous atrocity must be met with harsh consequences,” he said.
“I have always said with clarity and unambiguously – those who live in Carinthia, in Austria, have to respect the law and adjust to our rules and values.”
Police said it was unclear whether the suspect had been acting on his own or with other people, and are continuing to look for potential further suspects.
Meanwhile in Germany on Saturday, police confirmed a two-year-old girl and her mother had died after a car had been driven into a crowd in Munich on Thursday.