Hamburg (Germany)

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    Hamburg, Germany Stabbing Victims in Stable Condition, Police Say

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    The police said they believed the violence, which injured 18 people during Friday’s evening rush hour, was not politically motivated.Victims of a knife attack Friday night in Hamburg, Germany, were in stable condition, the local police said on Saturday as they continued to investigate the motive of the woman who they said stabbed 18 people at the city’s central train station during Friday’s rush hour.Over the course of just a few minutes, the knife attack injured 18 people aged 19 to 85, according to an updated list supplied by the Hamburg police on Saturday. Four of those victims — three women and a man — had sustained life-threatening injuries and were hospitalized.The police said on Friday that they suspected that the woman was in a state of mental distress during the attack. On Saturday, a Hamburg judge will decide whether to admit her into a closed psychiatric ward.The police said the 39-year-old German woman, whom they detained with the help of two commuters just after the stabbing spree, was not under the influence of drugs or alcohol during the attack. They also said they believed the attack was not politically motivated.With more than half a million people passing through every day, Hamburg’s central train station is Germany’s busiest and also one of its most dangerous, according to crime figures.The city established a weapons-free zone several years ago to make it safer. That designation gives the police more power to conduct body searches and expel potential troublemakers from the site. More

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      Hamburg Airport Halts All Flights as Ground Staff Strike

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      The airport in Germany’s second largest city said the one-day strike, called over pay and conditions, began earlier than expected “without any notice.”The airport in Hamburg, Germany’s second largest city, said it had canceled all flights on Sunday because of a one-day strike over pay by ground staff called by a labor union that started its action earlier than expected without little warning.The airport had been expected to carry more than 40,000 passengers on Sunday, with 144 arrival flights and 139 departures, but only 10 flights took place before the strike took hold at 6.30 a.m. local time, Hamburg Airport said in a statement, which directed stranded passengers to contact their airlines. The airport said the strike, called by the labor union Verdi, had begun “without any notice” during a busy holiday.“The union is paralyzing the airport and without notice right at the beginning of Hamburg’s spring break,” Katja Bromm, head of communications at the airport, said in a statement. The airport mainly serves European destinations.The union, which represents public-sector service workers, said it had brought the strike forward by a day and minimized warning of the start time to maximize the pressure on the employer and to prevent the airport from bringing in nonunion workers.“We are very much aware that this strike may have hit families who have saved money to go on holiday, but the employer has left us no other choice,” said Lars Stubbe, the Hamburg representative of Verdi.The strike at Hamburg is the first of more than a dozen planned actions at airports across Germany on Monday, including at the country’s busiest airports, Frankfurt, Munich and Berlin Brandenburg, Mr. Stubbe said.Around 510,000 people will be affected by the strike on Monday, with more than 3,400 flights canceled, according to A.D.V., the association of Germany’s airport operators, German news media reported. The latest strike represents an escalation after Verdi, the full name of which is the Unified Services Union, staged walkouts in February.Mr. Stubbe said that its strikes aimed to increase pressure on employers over stalled collective bargaining talks to improve conditions for more than 25,000 employees in the aviation security sector. Among the union’s demands are 30 days of vacation, additional vacation for shift work and an increase in the annual bonus. The next round of talks is scheduled for later this month.The strikes come amid what is effectively an economic crisis in Germany, traditionally Europe’s powerhouse. The country’s economy shrank slightly last year and it has recovered less well from the pandemic than most of its European peers and the United States.The centrist conservative party, the Christian Democrats, secured the most votes in a parliamentary election last month in a rebuke to the country’s left-leaning government for its handling of the economy and immigration. More

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      Euro 2024 Shooting: Police in Hamburg Shoot Man With Ax

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      The shooting took place in Hamburg, in an area packed with soccer fans, and hours before the Netherlands and Poland were set to play in the city.A man wielding an ax on a street crowded with soccer fans was shot by the police on Sunday in Hamburg, Germany, only hours before the city was to host a game at the European Championship.The man threatened police officers with “a pickax and an incendiary device,” a police spokesman said on Sunday. When he did not respond to warnings, the police said, he was shot.The man was injured and was being treated, they confirmed. No fans nor police officers were injured.The incident took place in Hamburg’s entertainment district, a section of the city known as the Reeperbahn that is filled with restaurants and bars. At the time, the area was packed with thousands of fans who had arrived to see the Netherlands play Poland on Sunday afternoon.According to a spokeswoman for the Hamburg police and videos of the incident posted online, the man came out of a small restaurant with a small, double-bladed ax and a firebomb and threatened officers nearby.Standing behind a police barrier as fans watched only steps away, the man — dressed all in black — shouted and moved toward a group of about a dozen police officers, several of whom were pointing their weapons at him from either side of the barrier. He held the small ax in one hand and what appeared to be a bottle with a rag in its neck in the other.At the time of the incident, Hamburg’s Reeperbahn area was packed with thousands of fans who had arrived to see the Netherlands play Poland on Sunday afternoon.Lena Mucha for The New York TimesWhen a police officer sprayed pepper spray in the man’s direction, he turned and began running up the street as fans scattered out of his path. Officers moved to surround him a short distance up the narrow street, and soon after, at least four gunshots rang out and the man fell to the ground.The police said that the man had been injured, but they could not give further updates on his condition. He was placed in an ambulance and driven away.The gunshots, captured in several videos that were posted online, were a sudden and jarring intrusion into what had been a festive lunchtime atmosphere. Within minutes, scores of police officers had gathered and set up a cordon around the scene of the shooting, and loudspeaker announcements — and the looming kickoff — cleared the area.The site of the shooting was a 10-minute walk from the city’s official fan zone, which was thronged with many more thousands of fans at the time, and a short train ride from the 57,000-seat Volksparkstadion, where the Netherlands and Poland were to meet in the first of three tournament games set for Sunday.The shooting came on the third day of the monthlong tournament, which brings together the continent’s best 24 teams every four years, and amid a heightened police presence.The German authorities said last week that about 22,000 police officers would be working each day of the tournament, and that they would be supplemented by hundreds more from the participating countries. More