The attacker, who yesterday on a local train in the north of Germany, near Hamburg, with a knife killed two and injured five people is a Palestinian living in the country as a refugee since 2014, local authorities said today.

The motive of the 33-year-old attacker Ibrahim A., a Palestinian from the Gaza Strip, who killed a 17-year-old girl and a 19-year-old boy on a train between Kiel and Hamburg yesterday afternoon is not yet known.

"Given the dynamic sequence of events, many things are still unclear," said Schleswig-Holstein Interior Minister Sabine Zutterlin-Wack at an emergency press conference in Kiel.

German media reports that Ibrahim A. he was convicted several times for theft, fraud and inflicting serious bodily injuries, and he was released from pre-trial detention only six days ago.

In 2017, his asylum claim was rejected, but he was granted protection from deportation.

The attack upset the German public and caused numerous reactions. The right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) started a poster campaign today accusing the German Minister of the Interior Nancy Feser that he is not doing enough to expel illegal criminals from Germany.

The "Bild" newspaper, on the other hand, today criticized the "NDR" public service because it refuses to state the nationality of the perpetrator in the report on the incident.

An attacker stabbed passengers with a knife at a train station in Germany, there were deaths and injuries