LAST UPDATE | 23 May

A GERMAN WOMAN has been arrested after seventeen people were reportedly injured in a knife attack at the central train station in Hamburg in Germany this evening.

Some of the victims sustained life-threatening injuries in the stabbing, which took place in the middle of the city’s evening rush hour, emergency services said.

The suspect, a 39-year-old German woman, was arrested at the scene by law enforcement, a Hamburg police spokesman said. There is no evidence to currently suggest that the attack was politically motivated.

A “major police operation” is now underway at Hamburg Hauptbahnhof, local police said on social media.

“According to initial information, a person injured several people with a knife at the main train station,” Hamburg police said in a post on X.

“The suspect was apprehended by the responding forces.”

A spokesman for the Hamburg fire department told AFP that 12 people had been injured and that among them were “four people with life-threatening injuries”, the spokesman said, revising a previous figure of six.

With reporting by – © AFP 2025