BERLIN (AP) — A man on a long-distance train in southern Germany attacked and slightly injured four people with a hammer Thursday before he was detained by police, authorities said.
Police in Straubing said the attack happened on an ICE express train headed from the northern Germany city of Hamburg to the Austrian capital of Vienna while it was between Straubing and Plattling in the southern state of Bavaria.
About 500 people were on board when the attack happened, police said. About 150 police officers, firefighters and emergency personnel were deployed to the scene, police added. The railway line was closed down.
Police initially said the perpetrator used an axe in the attack but later said he allegedly used a hammer and likely other weapons which they did not further name.
They identified the suspect as a 20-year-old Syrian national.
Three of the four injured passengers also were Syrians, a boy of 15 and two men aged 24 and 51. The fourth victim was a 38-year-old passenger whose nationality was not yet known, police said. All four injured passengers were taken to nearby hospitals.
Police did not provide further details on the identity of the attacker or his motive, but later said that he was overpowered by fellow passengers and had also been injured.
The perpetrator “is probably somewhat more seriously injured," a police spokesperson told German news agency dpa. He was in police custody and receiving medical treatment.
According to the Bavarian Red Cross, the emergency services were alerted at around 2 p.m. local time, after passengers pulled the emergency brakes. The train came to a halt near the village of Straßkirchen, dpa reported.
The Red Cross said a special care center was set up nearby to take care of passengers. In addition to numerous rescue services and two helicopters, psychological caregivers were deployed to help those who were not injured but might have been traumatized.
German rail operator Deutsche Bahn said in a statement that “our thoughts and sympathy are with the injured and all those who now have to come to terms with what they have experienced," and thanked emergency services for the quick arrest of the suspect.
Germany has seen several violent attacks in public spaces in recent months.
In May, a woman stabbed and injured more than a dozen people at Hamburg's central station. In February, a driver plowed into a demonstration in Munich, killing two and injuring more than 20.
In December, a man killed six and injured more than 200 when he drove a car through a Christmas market in Magdeburg.
Police and forensics are investigating an ICE train in which a man attacked several passengers in Strasskirchen, Germany, Thurdsday, July 3, 2025. (Armin Weigel/dpa via AP)
JERUSALEM (AP) — Over two dozen families from one of the few remaining Palestinian Bedouin villages in the central West Bank have packed up and fled their homes in recent days, saying harassment by Jewish settlers living in unauthorized outposts nearby has grown unbearable.
The village, Ras Ein el-Auja, was originally home to some 700 people from more than 100 families that have lived there for decades.
Twenty-six families already left on Thursday, scattering across the territory in search of safer ground, say rights groups. Several other families were packing up and leaving on Sunday.
“We have been suffering greatly from the settlers. Every day, they come on foot, or on tractors, or on horseback with their sheep into our homes. They enter people’s homes daily,” said Nayef Zayed, a resident, as neighbors took down sheep pens and tin structures.
Israel's military and the local settler governing body in the area did not respond to requests for comment.
Other residents pledged to stay put for the time being. That makes them some of the last Palestinians left in the area, said Sarit Michaeli, international director at B’Tselem, an Israeli rights group helping the residents.
She said that mounting settler violence has already emptied neighboring Palestinian hamlets in the dusty corridor of land stretching from Ramallah in the West to Jericho, along the Jordanian border, in the east.
The area is part of the 60% of the West Bank that has remained under full Israeli control under interim peace accords signed in the 1990s. Since the war between Israel and Hamas erupted in October 2023, over 2,000 Palestinians — at least 44 entire communities — have been expelled by settler violence in the area, B'Tselem says.
The turning point for the village came in December, when settlers put up an outpost about 50 meters (yards) from Palestinian homes on the northwestern flank of the village, said Michaeli and Sam Stein, an activist who has been living in the village for a month.
Settlers strolled easily through the village at night. Sheep and laundry went missing. International activists had to begin escorting children to school to keep them safe.
“The settlers attack us day and night, they have displaced us, they harass us in every way” said Eyad Isaac, another resident. “They intimidate the children and women.”
Michaeli said she’s witnessed settlers walk around the village at night, going into homes to film women and children and tampering with the village’s electricity.
The residents said they call the police frequently to ask for help — but it seldom arrives. Settlement expansion has been promoted by successive Israeli governments over nearly six decades. But Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government, which has placed settler leaders in senior positions, has made it a top priority.
That growth has been accompanied by a spike in settler violence, much of it carried out by residents of unauthorized outposts. These outposts often begin with small farms or shepherding that are used to seize land, say Palestinians and anti-settlement activists. United Nations officials warn the trend is changing the map of the West Bank, entrenching Israeli presence in the area.
Some 500,000 Israelis have settled in the West Bank since Israel captured the territory, along with east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, in the 1967 Mideast war. Their presence is viewed by most of the international community as illegal and a major obstacle to peace. The Palestinians seek all three areas for a future state.
For now, displaced families of the village have dispersed between other villages near the city of Jericho and near Hebron further south, said residents. Some sold their sheep and are trying to move into the cities.
Others are just dismantling their structures without knowing where to go.
"Where will we go? There’s nowhere. We’re scattered,” said Zayed, the resident, “People’s situation is bad. Very bad.”
An Israeli settler herds his flock near his outpost beside the Palestinian village of Ras Ein al-Auja in the West Bank, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)
A Palestinian resident of Ras Ein al-Auja village, West Bank burns trash, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)
Palestinian children play in the West Bank village of Ras Ein al-Auja, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)
Palestinian residents of Ras Ein al-Auja village, West Bank pack up their belongings and prepare to leave their homes after deciding to flee mounting settler violence, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)
Palestinian residents of Ras Ein al-Auja village, West Bank pack up their belongings and prepare to leave their homes after deciding to flee mounting settler violence, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)
