Police on Friday shot a knifeman who attacked staff and visitors at a Jewish hospital in Germany’s capital of Berlin, The Daily Mail reported.
A 45-year-old man carrying a knife attacked staff and patients at around 2.30 p.m. local time in House D of the Jewish Hospital on Heinz-Galinski-Strasse, in northern Berlin, on Friday afternoon.
The man was reportedly a patient being treated for addiction at the hospital’s psychiatric clinic.
Onlookers said officers who were called to the scene fired two shots, hitting the knifeman in the leg. No one else was injured in the attack.
A police spokesman said the attacker threatened nurses and patients and did the same to officers when they arrived.
“He did not respond to requests to put the knife down,” said the spokesman.
The police said the attacker’s injuries were not life-threatening and he was taken to another ward in the hospital for treatment.
The Berlin Jewish Hospital was founded more than 260 years ago. The name “Jewish Hospital” refers to the origins of the hospital, an organization which was funded by the Berlin Jewish community.
It is an open hospital that provides medical, nursing and social services to anyone who needs help, regardless of religion and culture, origin or skin color, noted The Daily Mail.
Homicide police are investigating the attack. Murder police usually investigate when officers fire their weapons, even if no one has been killed.
The motive for the attack remains unclear and it is unknown if terrorism or antisemitism are involved.
This past October, a rock was thrown at the women’s section at the Orthodox synagogue in the German city of Hanover during Yom Kippur prayers. The rock shattered one of the windows of the building, but there were no reports of injuries.
A year earlier, four people were arrested in Germany on suspicion of planning an attack during Yom Kippur on a synagogue in the city of Hagen.
One of the detainees is a 16-year-old Syrian boy. Police described the plot as “Islamist.”
In 2019, a gunman shot dead two people outside a synagogue in the city of Halle during Yom Kippur prayers.
Germany has been hit by several terrorist attacks in recent years.The worst such attack took place in December of 2016, when Tunisian terrorist Anis Amri killed 12 people and injured dozens more when he drove a truck into a Christmas market in Berlin.
In January, a knife-wielding man described as a “stateless Palestinian” fatally stabbed two people and injured seven others on a train traveling from Kiel to Hamburg before he was arrested.