BBC News<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n 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.<\/p>\n The city’s fire department said 17 <\/b>people were injured in the attack, while police said they did not yet have a valid figure for the number of victims.<\/p>\n Hamburg Police said officers arrested a 39-year-old German woman at the scene as they carried out a major operation.<\/p>\n The attack took place at the city’s Central Station at about 18:00 local time (16:00 GMT) on Friday.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n A spokesman for the Hamburg fire department told AFP news agency <\/b>17 people had been injured and that some of the injuries were life-threatening.<\/p>\n In a post on X, Hamburg Police said several people who were hurt had sustained life-threatening injuries.<\/p>\n Speaking to the press outside the station, police said they believe the suspect acted alone and did not have a “political motive”.<\/p>\n Rather, they believe she may have been “in a state of mental distress,” Florian Abbenseth, a police spokesperson, told reporters.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Some of the victims were treated inside trains, according to reports.<\/p>\n German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said the attack was “shocking” and thanked the emergency services on the ground for “their rapid assistance”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n German rail operator Deutsche Bahn said four platforms at the station were closed and some services would experience delays and diversions.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n One photograph used by German media shows a man being taken away by paramedics on a stretcher.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Hamburg Central Station is one of Germany’s busiest transport hubs, with more than 550,000 travellers per day according to its website. It is often crowded during Friday rush hour.<\/p>\n This is the latest in a series of violent attacks in Germany in recent months.<\/p>\n In January, a two-year-old boy and a 41-year-old man were killed in a stabbing in a park in Aschaffenburg<\/a>, with several others hurt.<\/p>\n A Spanish tourist was stabbed just a month later at Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial<\/a>.<\/p>\n Last December, six people were killed and hundreds were injured after a car drove into a crowd at a Christmas market<\/a> in the eastern city of Magdeburg.<\/p>\n The suspects in these previous attacks were migrants, which has led Germany to tighten border control checks<\/a> and saw immigration become a key issue for voters during the country’s federal elections in February.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n![](\"https:\/\/static.files.bbci.co.uk\/bbcdotcom\/web\/20250522-140200-09101d307-web-2.22.2-1\/grey-placeholder.png\")
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RENE SCHRODER\/NEWS5\/AFP via Getty Images<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n