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Prosecutors in Germany say a teenager who attacked train passengers with an axe in Wuerzburg

had learnt that a friend had been killed in Afghanistan, and wanted to get revenge.
The 17 year-old, who arrived in Germany a year ago as an unaccompanied refugee, injured four
people, two critically, in the attack on Monday evening.
He was shot dead by police as he fled.
The self-styled Islamic State group (IS) has released a video purporting to show him making
threats.
In it, a young man brandishing a knife says he is an "IS soldier" preparing for a suicide mission.
German officials say they later found a hand-painted IS flag in his room.

Axe attack dominates German media

How Afghan teenagers build a new life in Germany

Bavarian regional prosecutor Erik Ohlenschlager said the boy was a devout Muslim and wanted
to get revenge on "infidels" who had harmed his Muslim friends. He accepted that his own death
was a possibility.
Mr Ohlenschlager said the attack was "definitely politically motivated".
But Bavaria's Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann said there was no indication the teenager had
direct contact with IS.

Life-threatening
The teenager reportedly shouted the Islamic phrase "Allahu akbar" ("God is great") during the
attack.
A police official said on Tuesday that two of the five people injured were in a "life-threatening"
condition.
Inside the carriage, a 62-year-old man, his 58-year-old wife, their daughter, 27, and her
boyfriend, 27, were attacked, the South China Morning Post reports. They were from Hong
Kong. The 17-year-old son travelling with them was not hurt, it said.
A source told the paper the father and boyfriend had tried to protect the other members of the
group.
Another woman was injured outside the train as the man fled. Fourteen people were treated for
shock.

A news agency with links to IS said the boy had launched the attack "in answer to the calls to
target the countries of the coalition fighting Islamic State".
The axe attack comes days after a lorry ploughed into a crowd in Nice in France, killing 84
people. IS said one of its followers had carried out that attack.

'Slaughterhouse'
Mr Herrmann said those who had interacted with the young man in recent months described him
as calm and quiet and they could not understand his actions.
The teenager had gone to the mosque "on special occasions", he said, but no-one had noticed any
radical behaviour and there were no signs yet of a direct link to jihadist networks.
He had a placement in a bakery and was likely to secure paid employment soon.

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