Knife attack in the Berlin supermarket: customer seriously injured!

Knife attack in the Berlin supermarket: customer seriously injured!

In a supermarket in Berlin-Lichtenberg, a 40-year-old man seriously injured a 66-year-old customer with a knife on Saturday evening. The perpetrator bought the knife and scissors in front of the attack, which makes the brutal action all the more shocking. The attacker fled after the incident, but could be arrested by police officers nearby. The victim was taken to a hospital in a critical condition and had to be operated on; However, current information on its health is not available. The 40-year-old is to be brought before a judge today. It remains unclear whether there was a motif or a personal connection between the perpetrator and the victim, or whether the attack was carried out for no reason. The incident is reminiscent of a similar knife attack on New Year's Eve in Berlin-Charlottenburg, in which a homeless Syrian stabbed two people.

These repeated attacks raise questions about security in public spaces and reflect a worrying development in German crime. A current report by Statista shows that the number of knife attacks recorded in the police in Germany has risen sharply in recent years. This applies in particular to dangerous and serious bodily harm, which increased between 2021 and 2022. The numbers prove a trend that can also be observed in the federal states such as Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria and Berlin.

a worrying trend

according to the Integration there were a total of 10,917 knife attacks in 2021. In 2022, the police registered 8,160 cases in connection with dangerous and serious bodily harm, which represents an increase compared to 2021. It is particularly striking that over half of the suspects in federal states such as Bavaria and Berlin are not-German background, which leads to an intensive discussion about the origin and possible causes of these acts.

The Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser (SPD) has already proposed measures to increase security, including a ban on knives in public transport. This discussion about knife crime is not new; It was run five years ago. A media analysis of 2023 also shows an increase in reporting on violent crimes, in particular from foreign suspects, whereby in many cases they are disproportionately represented in the news, although the statistics do not show any clear increase in attacks.

security situation in Germany

Another incident that happened in Munich on the same day on which the attack took place in Berlin, illustrates the worrying situation. There, a 30-year-old attacker injured several people on Theresienwiese before she was shot by the police and later succumbed to her injuries. These two incidents raise questions about the general security situation in Germany and illustrate the urgency with which strategies for fighting crime must be considered.

Although the majority of knife attacks in Germany do not lead to fatal injuries, an analysis of the Statista Understand the causes of such attacks. The Federal Criminal Police Office has been capturing knife attacks separately for two years in order to improve the data and to be able to tackle this problem more specifically.