The Islamic State group claimed responsibility on Saturday for a knife attack in the German city of Solingen that killed three people and wounded eight others.

Some 24 hours after the attack, police said they made a second arrest on Saturday evening as part of a police operation at a home for refugees in Solingen. Police said they could not provide more details on the individual or its connection to the incident.

Police earlier on Saturday detained a teenager who they said may be connected with the attack but said the perpetrator was still at large.

Describing the man who carried out the attack as a "soldier of the Islamic State", the militant group said in a statement on its Telegram account: "He carried out the attack in revenge for Muslims in Palestine and everywhere."

It did not immediately provide any evidence for its assertion and it was not clear how close any relationship between the attacker and Islamic State was.

Hendrik Wuest, premier of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, described Friday evening's attack during a festival in the city as an act of terror.

"This attack has struck at the heart of our country," Wuest told reporters.

Interior minister Nancy Faeser said authorities were doing all they could to catch the assailant.

Police spent the day conducting a manhunt. The teen detained was a 15-year-old who police were investigating for a possible link to the attacker.

The attack took place in the Fronhof, a market square in the western German city where live bands were playing as part of a festival marking the its 650th anniversary.

Markus Caspers, an official with the public prosecutor’s office in Duesseldorf, said authorities were treating the attack as a possible terrorist incident because there was no other known motive and the victims seemed unrelated.

A police official, Thorsten Fleiss, said the assailant appeared to aim for his victims' throats.

"The perpetrator must be quickly caught and punished to the fullest extent of the law," Chancellor Olaf Scholz said in a post on X.

Police cordoned off the square on Saturday and passers-by placed candles and flowers outside the barriers.

"We are full of shock and grief," Solingen Mayor Tim-Oliver Kurzbach told journalists.

A German musician who goes by the name Topic said he was playing on a nearby stage when the incident occurred. He was told about what had happened but was asked to keep playing "to avoid causing a mass panic attack", he posted on Instagram.

He was eventually told to stop, and "since the attacker was still on the run, we hid in a nearby store while police helicopters circled above us," Topic wrote.

Authorities cancelled the remainder of the weekend festival.

Fatal stabbings and shootings are relatively rare in Germany. The government said earlier this month it wanted to toughen rules on knives that can be carried in public by reducing the maximum length allowed.

In June, a 29-year-old policeman was fatally stabbed in Mannheim during an attack on a right-wing demonstration. A stabbing attack on a train in 2021 injured several people.

North Rhine-Westphalia's interior minister, Herbert Reul, visited the scene in Solingen early on Saturday. He told reporters it was a targeted attack on human life.

Solingen, well known for its knife manufacturing industry, is a city of some 165,000 people.

The episode comes ahead of three state elections next month in Thuringia, Saxony and Brandenburg, in which the anti-immigrant far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) has a chance of winning.

Though the motive and identity of the assailant were not known, a top AfD candidate for one of the state elections, Bjoern Hoecke, seized on Friday's attack, posting on X: "Do you really want to get used to this? Free yourselves and end this insanity of forced multiculturalism".

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German police hunt festival knife attack suspect

German police on Saturday hunted a man who stabbed three people to death and wounded eight others at a street festival in the city of Solingen, with a terror motive for the attack "not excluded".

The unidentified knifeman went on a rampage in the western town of Solingen late on Friday, as thousands had gathered for the first night of a "Festival of Diversity", part of a series of events to mark the town's 650th anniversary.

On Saturday, police announced they had detained a person as part of the probe, with a prosecutor later saying it was a 15-year-old suspected of "non-denunciation" of a criminal act.

Witnesses had allegedly seen the teen discussing the attack just before it happened with a man who could be the knifeman, said Markus Caspers, prosecutor of Duesseldorf that lies just west of Solingen.

"We have not been able to identify a motive for now, but in view of all of the circumstances, we are working under the assumption that the initial suspicion of a terrorist motive cannot be excluded," Caspers told a press conference.

The people killed were men of 56 and 67 years of age and a 56-year-old woman, officials said.

"The victims were completely unknown with no known ties between them, so based on this we're concluding that it could be a terror act," Caspers said, adding that "no other motive is evident at this time".

Four of the wounded were in a "serious" condition, officials said, revising down an earlier estimate of five.

"After analysing the first images, we're going on the principle that it was an attack targeted toward the neck," police chief Thorsten Fleiss told the press conference.

Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said Germany's "security authorities are doing everything they can to catch the perpetrator" of the "horrific act", while Chancellor Olaf Scholz said he "must be caught quickly and punished".

Thousands of people had gathered in front of a stage on the festival's first night when the killing started.

- 'A person fell' -

"Out of nowhere, a man armed with a knife stabbed people at random and killed them," regional interior minister Herbert Reul said in comments at the scene.

Witness Lars Breitzke told the Solinger Tageblatt newspaper he was a few metres from the attack, not far from the festival stage, and "understood from the expression on the singer's face that something was wrong".

"And then, a metre away from me, a person fell," said Breitzke, who at first thought it was someone who had too much to drink.

When he turned around, he saw other people lying on the ground amid pools of blood.

Solingen mayor Tim-Oliver Kurzbach said the whole city was in "shock, horror and great grief".

"We all wanted to celebrate our town's anniversary together and now we have to mourn the dead and injured," he said.

German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser called for the country to "remain united" as she denounced "those who want to stir up hatred" during a visit to the site of the tragedy. "Let us not be divided", she said.

- 'Brutal and senseless' -

Hendrik Wuest, the premier of North Rhine-Westphalia state, also expressed his "shock and grief" in a post on social media platform X.

"An act of the most brutal and senseless violence has struck at the heart of our state," he said.

Solingen is a city of some 150,000 people located between Duesseldorf and Cologne.

People had gathered in the town on Friday evening for the first day of the three-day "Festival of Diversity".

It was set to feature music, street theatre, variety shows and comedians in the city centre and several other areas, it said.

Up to 75,000 visitors had been expected to attend.

- Festival cancelled -

The Solinger Tageblatt said one of the festival organisers went on stage to announce it was cancelled.

Thousands of people cleared the area, the paper reported, with a journalist at the scene describing the atmosphere as "ghostly".

"People left the scene in shock, but calmly," Philipp Mueller, one of the organisers, told the newspaper.

Mueller said the rest of the festival would also be cancelled.

Germany has seen a series of knife attacks over the past 12 months, with the government promising to crack down on knife crime.

A police officer was killed and five people were wounded in a knife attack at a far-right rally in the city of Mannheim in May.

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