Eighteen injured in Hamburg knife attack as woman arrested

Several people have suffered life-threatening injuries in a knife attack at the main railway station in the German city of Hamburg, police have said.

Hamburg Police said 18 people were injured in the attack at the northern city's Central Station at about 18:00 local time (16:00 GMT) on Friday.

Officers arrested a 39-year-old German woman at the scene as they carried out a major operation.

The woman remains in police custody and is scheduled to appear in court on Saturday.

In a post on X, Hamburg Police said several people who were hurt had sustained life-threatening injuries.

Speaking to the press outside the station, police said they believe the suspect acted alone and did not have a "political motive".

Rather, they believe she may have been "in a state of mental distress," Florian Abbenseth, a police spokesperson, told reporters.

Police later added that its homicide division is investigating the incident as well as the suspect's motives.

The attack happened between platforms 13 and 14 - which are accessible via a busy main road - while a train was on one of the platforms.

Some of the victims were treated inside trains, according to reports.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said the attack was "shocking" and thanked the emergency services on the ground for "their rapid assistance".

German rail operator Deutsche Bahn said four platforms at the station were closed and some services would experience delays and diversions.

Pictures from the scene show a number of emergency service personnel and vehicles on the ground, and barriers that seem to be hiding the injured from public view.

One photograph used by German media shows a man being taken away by paramedics on a stretcher.

A video on social media appears to show the suspect with her hands behind her back being escorted out of the station platform by officers who put her in a police vehicle.

Hamburg Central Station is one of 's busiest transport hubs, with more than 550,000 travellers per day according to its website. It is often crowded during Friday rush hour.

This is the latest in a series of violent attacks in in recent months.

In January, a two-year-old boy and a 41-year-old man were killed in a stabbing in a park in Aschaffenburg, with several others hurt.

A Spanish tourist was stabbed just a month later at Berlin's Holocaust Memorial.

Last December, six people were killed and hundreds were injured after a car drove into a crowd at a Christmas market in the eastern city of Magdeburg.

The suspects in these previous attacks were migrants, which has led to tighten border control checks and saw immigration become a key issue for voters during the country's federal elections in February.