VILLACH: A stabbing that left a teenager dead and five other people injured in southern Austria was an “Islamist attack”, the interior minister said on Sunday, with a 23-year-old Syrian asylum seeker held.

Saturday’s attack in the city of Villach has shaken the Alpine nation, where far-right-led talks to form a government collapsed this week with security one of the major issues.

Austria had so far only seen one jihadist attack, in 2020, when a convicted IS sympathiser went on a shooting rampage in downtown Vienna, killing four. In Villach’s “Islamist attack with IS connections,” the Syrian asylum seeker held was radicalised online “in a short space of time”, according to Interior Minister Gerhard Karner.

During a raid of the suspect’s apartment, police said they found “clear evidence of Islamist radical thought”, such as IS flags on the wall.

No weapons or “other dangerous items” were found, police said, adding the suspect was under investigation for “murder and attempted murder” charges.

In the attack in the centre of the city in Carinthia state, the suspect went after passers-by with a folding knife. A fellow Syrian food deliverer, also an asylum seeker, intervened by ramming a car into the attacker, who was slightly injured and then arrested.

A 14-year-old Austrian died, while five other people were hurt, including three of them seriously. Among the wounded are two other teens, both aged 15.

Published in Dawn, February 17th, 2025