LAST UPDATE | 16 Feb

A STABBING THAT left a teenager dead and five others injured in southern Austria was an “Islamist attack”, Austria’s Interior Minister Gerhard Karner said today.

“It is an Islamist attack with IS connections,” Karner told reporters in the southern city of Villach where Saturday’s attack took place, referring to the Islamic State jihadist group.

He added the suspect – a 23-year-old Syrian asylum seeker – was radicalised online “in a short space of time”.

In the attack in the centre of the city, a man went after passers-by with a folding knife, police said. The Syrian was arrested just after the attack, which a fellow Syrian food deliverer stopped by ramming a car into the attacker.

A 14-year-old boy died, while five other men were hurt, including two seriously. Among the wounded are two other teens, both aged 15, police said.

The suspect is an asylum seeker with a valid residence permit and no criminal record, according to police.

‘Afraid’

At the site of the crime, residents were placing candles in front of shops in a street, where the attack happened in the centre of Villach, a city in Carinthia province. Some hugged.

“I am afraid for my children. I am afraid for those around me. I fear for the future. I fear where this will lead. I am endlessly sad,” local resident Tanja Planinschek told AFP at the site.

“Not only I, but all of us have been afraid for a long time that something bigger will happen,” she said, adding the country “should open our eyes and see whom we let in, whom we help, whom we leave with all kinds of freedoms. If nothing is done, it will get even worse.”

A food deliverer – also from Syria – intervened in the attack, ramming his car into the attacker, who was slightly hurt, police said.

“I saw a person lying on the ground, a man was attacking other passers-by – I didn’t think twice and drove at him,” the Krone tabloid quoted the deliverer, Alaaeddin Alhalabi (42) as saying.

“He wanted to go towards the city centre, there were children on the street – I couldn’t let that happen,” he said, adding he regretted he could not save the 14-year-old.

Another eyewitness, Mahir (29) told Krone that it was “like a movie”.

“First, he (the attacker) argued with people in a side street, then he started hitting around him. We first tried to hold him down. Then we saw the knife and backed away… He went after everyone,” he said.

‘Harshest consequences’

Carinthia Governor Peter Kaiser of the Social Democrats called for the “harshest consequences” for this “unbelievable atrocity”.

Far-right leader Herbert Kickl – whose party topped September’s national elections for the first time ever – said he was “appalled” by the attack, calling for “a rigorous clamp-down on asylum”.

Kickl’s Freedom Party (FPOe) this week failed in talks to form a government with the runner-up and incumbent conservatives because of disagreements – among others – over who would hold sensitive cabinet posts dealing with security. Austria hosts a large Syrian refugee population of almost 100,000.

After Bashar al-Assad’s ouster in Syria in December, Austria and several European countries froze pending asylum requests from Syrians to reassess the situation.

In addition, Austria has stopped family reunifications and sent out at least 2,400 letters to revoke refugee status. The interior ministry has said it is preparing “an orderly repatriation and deportation programme to Syria”.

Austria has so far only seen one jihadist attack, in 2020, when a convicted IS sympathiser went on a shooting rampage in downtown Vienna, killing four.

The Villach attack comes just two days after a suspected Afghan asylum seeker rammed a car into people in the city of Munich in neighbouring Germany, killing a two-year-old girl and her mother and wounding 37 other people.

A 24-year-old Afghan asylum seeker was arrested on suspicion of deliberately driving the car into a trade union demonstration. German police said he may have had Islamist extremist motives for the attack.