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Associated Press

German authorities have identified a youth shown in a video released by the Islamic State group as the teenage Afghan refugee who wounded four Hongkongers in an axe attack on a German train, a German official said Tuesday.
In the video, the person urges others to kill “infidels”.


“The man in the video is the Wuerzburg assailant,” a spokesman for Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann said, referring to a video posted online by the Aamaq News Agency, an Islamic State mouthpiece.
Two Hongkongers critically hurt in German axe attack by Afghan refugee who kept Islamic State flag at home
In the video, the assailant waved a knife and claimed in Pashto to be a “holy warrior” of the group with the intention of carrying out an attack in Germany.
In a video posted by the Islamic State that purports to show the attacker, the young man calls on others to “kill these infidels in the countries that you live in.”
“You can see I have lived in your own home and have planned to behead you in your own territory,” the young man says in Pashto while brandishing a knife.
Late Monday, the 17-year old Afghan national, whose name has been withheld by authorities, attacked people with an axe and a knife on a regional train heading towards the Bavarian city of Wuerzburg in southern Germany.
Four of the five victims were members of the same family visiting from Hong Kong. Two of the victims remained in hospital with “acute and life-threatening injuries,” prosecutor Erik Ohlenschlager said.
They have been identified as a married couple, their daughter and her boyfriend. The two men, aged 62 and 31, suffered critical injuries and were under intensive care in the city of Wuerzburg.
The 62 year old, surnamed Yau, and Edmund Au Yeung, the boyfriend of Tracy Yau Hiu-tung, suffered severe head, neck, ­abdominal and hand wounds after they tried to protect their loved ones.
The attack was aborted when the train was brought to an emergency halt and the teenager fled the scene, assaulting a woman who was walking her dog nearby. Police shot and killed him shortly thereafter.
Aamaq said in a statement that the 17-year-old “carried out the operation in response to calls to target states in the coalition fighting Islamic State.”
The attack renewed calls for stricter controls on asylum seekers in Germany.
“What is clear is that we must keep tighter control over what comes into our country,” Herrmann told public broadcaster ARD. “We have to limit the influx and thereby be able to really deal intensively with those who have a right to asylum and make sure that they don’t get out of hand like this.”
More than 1.1 million refugees arrived in Germany in 2015. The attacker is one of nearly 15,000 unaccompanied minors who applied for asylum in Germany in 2015, according to the BAMF agency for refugees. Many of them suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.
The assailant registered as a refugee in the southeastern city of Passau in June 2015 and received a residence permit three months ago, authorities said.
He had been living in a home for young refugees until he was placed with a foster family in a town near Wuerzburg two weeks ago, according to Herrmann.
“Witnesses have not described him as in any way radicalized or fanatic,” Herrmann said. “He went to mosques on Muslim holidays but did not seem particularly devout.”
Prosecutors said that the teenager had learned over the weekend that a friend had been killed in Afghanistan, and that his host family had noted a change in behavior since then.
Authorities found a hand-painted Islamic State flag and Pashto-language writings in his room, including a goodbye note to his father and a text calling on Muslims to arm themselves.
Police investigator Lothar Koehler said the teen had posted a “cryptic message” on social media 24 hours before the attack in which he mentioned the “enemies of Islam.”
In the Pashto writings found in his room, he expressed the hope that he would be able to “take revenge on the infidels and … go to heaven,” Koehler said, reading the translated statement aloud at a news conference.
Similar attacks in Germany have been linked to radical forms of Islam. In May, a man allegedly shouted “Allahu Akbar” before killing one person and wounding three at a train station near Munich.


‘Kill these infidels’: Islamic State video shows youth who attacked Hongkongers with axe on German train

A still image from an undated video Islamic State posted July 19, 2016 in which a man whom it identifies as the Afghan refugee who attacked passengers with an axe on a train in Germany vows to carry out a suicide mission and urges other Muslims to do the same. Photo: Reuters

A still image from an undated video Islamic State posted July 19, 2016 in which a man whom it identifies as the Afghan refugee who attacked passengers with an axe on a train in Germany vows to carry out a suicide mission and urges other Muslims to do the same. Social Media via REUTERS TV ATTENTION EDITORS - THIS IMAGE WAS PROVIDED BY A THIRD PARTY. EDITORIAL USE ONLY. NO RESALES. NO ARCHIVE.

epa05431173 Police stand guard overnight outside a train near Wuerzburg, Bavaria, Germany, 18 July 2016. A 17-year-old Afghan was shot dead by police after wounding four people, three critically, in a slashing spree aboard the commuter train, according to media reports. EPA/KARL-JOSEF HILDENBRAND

Train attack vuctims Yau Hiu-tung and boyfriend Edmund Au Yeung. Photo: SCMP Pictures (Handout)