A knifeman barricaded himself in a refugee centre in the German city of Hamburg with a pregnant woman, it has been reported.

Police were called amid reports a man with a weapon had stormed into the facility this morning and is holed up in a room.

A gunman has barricaded himself in refugee centre in the German city of Hamburg, it has been reported (file picture) </s> A refugee center in Hamburg was stormed by police on Tuesday after a man armed with a knife barricaded himself inside a room with a woman, believed to be his partner. The man was injured before being arrested, according to local reports.

The woman, who is pregnant, was released unharmed before members of Germany’s Special Deployment Commando (MEK) were deployed into the building, according to Bild.

Police have not yet disclosed a suspected motive for the incident.

The unidentified man was detained by police and reportedly taken in an ambulance to hospital for injuries sustained during the incident.

Members of the MEK are seen entering the building in one video uploaded to social media. While other photographs of the scene, posted online, show armed guards with dogs surrounding the center.

Police are cited in a report in Welt saying that the man was previously banned from entering the building but had returned repeatedly. </s> The armed and dangerous migrant took hostages and barrackaded himself into the centre in Hammersbrook, Hamburg.

A spokesperson for the migrant centre said he had trapped at least one woman inside with him and that was believed to be his pregnant partner.

Armed officers stormed the building with police dogs and what appeared to be heavy duty weapons.

German police said they believed the incident was taking place due to "a dispute over accommodation" and has now been resolved. </s> Image copyright AFP/Getty Images

A 50-year-old German man has been killed and six people injured in a knife attack in a Hamburg supermarket.

Police said the suspect was 26 years old and born in the United Arab Emirates. They said he acted alone and he was overpowered by passersby.

Mayor Olaf Scholz said the attack was motivated by "hate" but did not say it was a terror attack.

There are unconfirmed reports that the man shouted "Allahu akhbar", Arabic for "God is great" while attacking people.

Police said they were still seeking to confirm his current nationality. Mr Sholz said he was a failed asylum seeker.

The man attacked customers in the supermarket at random, ran outside and was chased by customers and by people outside the shop. They brought him to the ground before he was detained by plain-clothes police officers.

Mobile phone footage on German media that is purportedly of the attack's aftermath shows several people chasing a man and throwing chairs at him.

A 50-year-old woman and four men aged between 19 and 64 were stabbed, while a 35-year-old man was injured while helping overcome the suspect.

The attack happened in the Barmbek region in the north of the city in a branch of Edeka, Germany's largest supermarket chain.

Police say the man's weapon may have looked like a machete but they are, for now, assuming it was a kitchen knife.

One eyewitness made a gesture about 50cm (20 in) long when asked on German TV how big the knife was.

Asked whether this was a terror attack, a police official told the BBC: "We are at an early stage of the investigation... At the moment we can't rule anything out. We are investigating all avenues."

Speculation in German media said the attack may have been part of a robbery attempt but police said that that motive could not be confirmed.

One eyewitness, who ran from the scene into a nearby shop as the situation unfolded, told German broadcaster NTV that it seemed "hectic and confused, not like a properly planned attack". </s> Parts of Frankfurt main station where the incident occurred were closed off by police.

Parts of Frankfurt main station where the incident occurred were closed off by police.

AN EIGHT-YEAR-OLD boy died when a man pushed him and his mother in front of a train in Germany’s Frankfurt railway station, police said.

The suspect, a 40-year-old man of African origin who was unrelated to the victims, ran off but was overpowered by passers-by and detained by police.

The woman, who is also 40, was being treated in hospital after narrowly escaping from the tracks as an arriving ICE highspeed train ran over the child.

Police said they had opened a murder inquiry and were questioning the suspect for a possible motive.

“The boy and his mother were pushed in front of an arriving train. The mother was able to save herself,” a police spokeswoman said.

Passers-by ran after the fleeing man who, reports said, had tried but failed to push a third person onto the tracks, and who was arrested near the station.

The suspect is believed to be Eritrean, said Hesse state interior minister Peter Beuth.

Interior Minister Horst Seehofer broke off his summer holiday because of the killing, saying he planned to meet with the heads of major security authorities.

“The background to this heinous crime is still unclear,” he said.

“It is now the task of the investigating authorities to clear it up as quickly and comprehensively as possible. The perpetrator will be held responsible for the crime by all legal means.”

The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party quickly linked the case to a mass influx of migrants and refugees in recent years.

“The hideousness of this act can hardly be surpassed,” wrote the party’s Alice Weidel on Twitter, demanding that the government “finally start to protect the citizens of this country”.

A similar attack took place 10 days earlier when a 34-year-old woman was killed after being pushed in front of a train by a man in Voerde, near Duisburg. </s> One person was killed and several injured on Friday when a man wielding a large knife stormed a supermarket in the German city of Hamburg, allegedly trying to rob the supermarket, according to initial police reports. Witnesses reported that the attacker shouted “Allahu Akbar” — ‘Allah is great’ in Arabic — during the wild attack.

The immediate vicinity of the store in the neighborhood of Barmbek district, have been cordoned off and closed to traffic on a large radio, police sources said on Twitter.

According to the first information, the attacker indiscriminately slashed at those inside the supermarket, injuring several people and stabbing one person, who died at the scene, police said.

Update: The attacker was named as Ahmed al H., a 26-year-old Arab-born refugee who had been monitored by the police for his radical Islamist ideology and was awaiting deportation. </s> A man armed with a knife has fatally stabbed one person at a supermarket in the German city of Hamburg and wounded four others as he fled.

The man was arrested after the incident in the Barmbek district of the northern port city.

One person died at the scene after the assailant entered the supermarket, police said. As he fled, he injured another four people.

He was overwhelmed by passers-by and slightly injured in the process, police said. Officers were then able to arrest the man.

Police spokesman Timo Zill said authorities are investigating all possibilities in relation to the attack, which was carried out with a kitchen knife, according to the dpa news agency.

Police do not yet have any information on the assailant’s motive, but there was no indication there was more than one attacker involved.

Barmbek is in north-eastern Hamburg, situated away from the city centre. </s> A man shouting "Allahu Akbar" stabbed to death one person and wounded six others in a supermarket in the German city of Hamburg on Friday.

The attacker, who was born in the United Arab Emirates, was overpowered by passers-by and arrested.

Olaf Scholz, the mayor of Hamburg, said the attack had been motivated by "hate" and added that the suspected attacker was a failed asylum seeker whose deportation had been blocked because he lacked identity papers.

"I am outraged by the vicious attack that killed at least one Hamburger today," he said.

"It makes me especially angry that the perpetrator appears to be a person who claimed protection in Germany and then turned his hate against us."

Citing security sources, Berlin newspaper Der Tagesspiegel reported that the 26-year-old perpetrator was known to police as an Islamist. News agency DPA reported that security authorities were investigating evidence the man had Salafist ties.

The attacker stabbed to death a 50-year-old man believed to be a German citizen

Police said that he "struck out wildly" at others, wounding five more in the supermarket - a 50-year-old woman and four men aged 19, 56, 57 and 64.

Another 35-year-old man was hurt while overpowering the attacker in the street alongside other passers-by shortly after the killing.

All of the wounded were being treated or operated on in hospital, some of them for serious injuries, police said.

A police murder unit and a specialist politically-motivated crime squad are investigating the attack and were able to secure the suspected murder weapon.

German daily Bild published a picture of the attacker in the back of a police car with a white, blood-soaked bag over his head, and reported that he cried "Allahu Akbar" (God is Greatest) during the attack.

"Suddenly I saw a man smeared with blood running along the other side of the road with a knife," an eyewitness identified as Ralf W. told Bild. "He shouted out 'Allahu Akbar' as he was running."

A female witness standing in line at the supermarket till also told NTV rolling news channel that "as he was running out... he held up his arms and shouted 'Allahu Akbar'."

"I thought I was in a horror movie, I thought he would kill me," an unnamed woman who had been in the supermarket told rolling news channel NTV.

She said she feared she would die, as she was "queueing for the till and couldn't get away".

The suspect fled the supermarket after the attack. But "people were running after him with improvised weapons, chairs and sticks... they ran after him into a side street," Ralf W. told Bild. "People chased after the killer with chairs, they were throwing them at him," bakery worker Shaylin Roettmer told DPA. The witnesses slightly injured the attacker while they were overpowering him, before handing him over to police. Police cars outside the supermarket in Hamburg Police blocked off the lively and diverse high street dotted with cafes and shops in the northeast of the port city, Germany's second largest and host of the G20 summit of world leaders in early July. Anti-terror officers armed with automatic weapons patrolled the scene and onlookers gathered behind strips of red-and-white police tape. While the attacker's motives remain unknown, Germany has been on high alert about the threat of a jihadist attack, especially since last December's truck rampage through a Berlin Christmas market that killed 12 people. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the carnage in which a Tunisian rejected asylum seeker and ex-convict, Anis Amri, 24, ploughed the stolen truck through a crowd. </s> German authorities have opened a murder investigation against a man who pushed an eight-year-old boy and his mother in front of an oncoming train in a Frankfurt station on Monday, according to reports.

The 40-year-old man from Eritrea is being investigated on charges of murder and attempted murder after he was arrested outside the station following the incident, according to media reports.

Shocked bystanders watched as the man pushed the boy and his mother onto the tracks. The boy was killed by the impact of the train, while his mother survived after she rolled out of harm’s way into a narrow space beside the rails.

After the incident, the man attempted to run away from the station but was stopped by bystanders until police officers arrested him.

In a press conference after the incident, German authorities said the man had also unsuccessfully attempted to push another woman, 78, onto the tracks.

The man, named only as A. by German police, had been living in Switzerland since 2008, where he was granted asylum after fleeing his native Eritrea.

Media reports on Tuesday revealed that he is married with three children and that he did not know any of his victims.

While German officials said that the man had a steady job and was considered to be “well-integrated” into Swiss society, he had recently been on the radar of Swiss police after reportedly threatening a neighbour for unclear reasons.

The man is thought to have travelled to Frankfurt a few days before the incident, but the motives behind his actions remain unclear.

German news agency dpa said that he was going to be submitted to a psychiatric test and police have ruled out that he was under the influence of drugs or alcohol during the attack.

Additional media reports say that there is no evidence that the incident is linked with the recent shooting of another Eritrean national by a far-right sympathizer in a town east of Frankfurt.

The incident shocked Germany and the world, and people in Frankfurt have been laying flowers and candles at the site of the incident, with a memorial planned later on Tuesday.
German police storm a refugee center in Hamburg after a knife-wielding man barricades himself in a room with a pregnant woman believed to be his partner. The man was injured before he was arrested.