A young girl walked into a German railway station on Friday and near fatally stabbed the first officer who approached her, and now it has been revealed she is a devotee of the Islamic State.

A 15-year-old Moroccan (pictured) was arrested on Friday after an Islamist attack at Hanover central station inspired by the Islamic State. The young girl who was wearing a headscarf was observed to fix officials in the office with her gaze — this much can be seen from surveillance videos from the station, reports Bild.

Approached by an officer, the young girl handed over her identity documents, but as he was distracted reading the paper, she struck. A spokesman said: “When the officer slightly turned away to check her identity, with lightning speed she stabbed him… The colleague had no chance to defend himself”.

At that point, other officers piled in and detained the girl. The struck officer had to receive emergency surgery, the kitchen knife having entered his neck, with a colleague remarking “it’s a miracle he survived”.

The event garnered no media attention at the time but it has now been proven the attack was inspired by Islamist ideology, with the young girl attacking a target in Europe because she was unable to travel to the Islamic State itself to join her co-religionists.

Berlin newspaper BZ reports the girl had spent time living on the Turkish-Syrian border, and had possibly been radicalised there. She had recently been returned from the area to her mother in Germany, and it may be frustration at being taken away from being near the Islamic State that brought about the attack.

A police spokesman remarked on her remarkable callousness, showing no interest in whether the stabbed officer died but great concern after her arrest that her headscarf covered her properly, having become dislodged. Express reports the girl was a German passport holder, and had been “repeatedly” involved with the police before for charges of theft and assault

While such lone-wolf attacks remain reasonably rare in Europe, they have become very common in other parts of the world where the radical Islamist ideology holds sway, including in Israel where police officers are routinely the subject of knife attacks. Breitbart Jerusalem has reported on many of these, including girls as young as 13 going to stab officers, and propaganda featuring pre-teens.

One such incident in Israel that near identically conforms to the attack in Hanover was reported on in November, when a Palestinian woman calmly approached a security guard at a West Bank checkpoint and handed over her identity documents. While the man was distracted inspecting the papers, she took a knife out of her handbag and started ferociously stabbing him. The officer was injured and managed to shoot the assailant, who lived.

This article was amended on 03/03/15 to reflect the fact the attack took place in a railway, not police station.