Six injured in Swiss train attack

  • 14/08/2016
St Gallen train station (Walters Storyk Design Group)
St Gallen train station (Walters Storyk Design Group)

Six people have been injured in an attack aboard a Swiss train by a man armed with a knife and flammable fluid, police say.

Three adults, two teenagers and a child aged six were hurt, according to a St Gallen cantonal police statement.

Five were stabbed or burnt. A sixth suffered smoke inhalation as he came to the aid of the others. The assailant, a Swiss citizen, was also injured.

"According to current information, a 27-year-old Swiss man poured out a flammable liquid. He was also armed with at least one knife. The liquid caught fire," the statement said.

Authorities did not yet know the motive for the attacks but a crime of passion was one possibility, Bruno Metzger of the St Gallen cantonal police said in an interview with welt.de.

"A terrorism background still seems very, very far-fetched," Metzger said.

The assailant was in police custody, he said, but none of those injured - including the assailant - was responsive, so they could not be questioned.

Both a woman and the attacker were in critical condition, according to Swiss broadcaster SRF, citing the St Gallen police.

The attack occurred at 2:20pm local time as the train neared the Salez station on a trip between Buchs and Sennwald in St Gallen, a canton in the northeast of the Alpine republic, the police statement said.

It was the first attack of its kind in Switzerland in recent memory.

Reuters