New Foreign Office holiday alert issued for two European countries as 'attacks likely'

The Foreign Office has issued an urgent warning for two major European countries and said ‘attacks are very likely’. Anyone travelling to France and Germany is subject to the alert from officials in the wake of two horrific attacks.

The so-called Islamic State militant group has claimed responsibility for a knife attack in Solingen, Germany, that killed three people and wounded eight others at a crowded festival marking the city’s 650th anniversary.

The group said on its news site that the attacker targeted Christians and is a “soldier of the Islamic State” who carried out the assaults on Friday night “to avenge Muslims in Palestine and everywhere”.

The Foreign Office said in the new update: “We are aware of reports of a knife attack at a festival in Solingen on the evening of 23 August 2024, which German authorities advise has left 3 people dead and several injured. You should avoid the area and follow the advice of local authorities.”

It also advises: “Terrorists are very likely to try to carry out attacks in Germany in the near future, ”and it gave exactly the same message about France.

It added: “Attacks could be indiscriminate, including in public places visited by foreign nationals such as restaurants, markets, shopping centres, places of worship and religious sites, including synagogues, sporting and cultural events, crowded places and public gatherings.”

Officials highlighted a number of attacks in Germany including in 2021, when 5 people were stabbed and injured on a train in Neumarkt, Bavaria, in 2020, one person was killed and another seriously injured in a knife attack in Dresden, in 2020, 8 people were killed and 5 injured in 2 mass shootings in shisha bars in Hanau and in 2019, 2 people were shot and killed after a failed attempt to enter a synagogue in the eastern German city of Halle.

In France officials said the attacks could be similar to ones like in 2023, when one person was killed in a knife and hammer attack in central Paris, and in 2023, a teacher was killed in a knife attack in a school in Arras.

In the latest German attack German police have detained a suspect in the Solingen knife attack that killed three people, an official has said.

“We have been following a hot lead all day,” Herbert Reul, the state internal affairs minister of North Rhein Westphalia, told Tagesschau, the news programme of the German public television network ARD.

Markus Caspers, senior public prosecutor from the counterterrorism section of the public prosecutor’s office, told a news conference earlier Saturday that the 15-year-old boy was arrested after two female witnesses contacted police.“We are seeing the first signs of a new wave of terrorist attacks,” said Peter Neumann, a professor of security studies at King’s College in London.

IS “is trying to capitalise on the huge mobilisation resulting from Hamas’ terror offensive on October 7 2023, even though strictly speaking it had nothing to do with it,” he said.

“The kind of attack we saw in Solingen is exactly the kind of attack that (IS) is trying to inspire. It’s calling on people over the internet to attack ‘unbelievers’ using simple methods. like cars and knives. that way, it is trying to create an impression that (the Islamic State group) is everywhere and could strike anytime,” Mr Neumann told the Associated Press.