ISIS claims credit for axe attack on German train

The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria on Tuesday took credit after a 17-year-old Afghan attacked passengers with an axe on a regional train in Germany, according to The New York Times.

The Amaq News Agency, which often transmits messages from ISIS, said in an announcement that the attack was carried out by an “Islamic State soldier.” 

The teenager had reportedly come to Germany from Afghanistan and carried out the attack before being killed by police. The attack left at least four people wounded.

{mosads}German authorities said investigators found a hand-drawn flag of the Islamic State in the teenager’s room. Investigators also found notes in Pashto, showing the teenager may have been self-radicalized.

He is believed to have acted alone, but that hasn’t yet been confirmed, according to the Times.

Authorities are now looking for a motive for the attack.

“The first emergency call to the police from a witness in the train said that he had shouted ‘Allahu akbar,’” Joachim Herrmann, interior minister of the southern state of Bavaria, where the attack occurred on Monday night, told the public broadcaster ZDF. “In searching the room where he last lived, a hand-drawn [Islamic State] flag was found.

“This must now all be put together in like a big mosaic,” he said, “to figure out what his motivation was and the extent to which he really belonged in an Islamic movement, or whether he became self-radicalized very recently.”