A 21-year-old man has killed a woman with a machete and injured two other people before being arrested in the southern German city of Reutlingen.

The Polish foreign ministry said the victim was a Polish woman who was pregnant.

The man, a Syrian asylum seeker, had been involved in previous incidents causing injuries to other people, a police spokesman said. The motive was not clear but there was no indication that the incident was a terrorist attack.

The assailant was apparently acting alone and “there is no danger to anyone else at this time”, the spokesman said.

Witnesses said the man was having an argument with the woman before he attacked her at about 4.30pm on Sunday.

The spokesman had no immediate information about when the man arrived in Germany, or when the previous incidents took place.



It was the third act of violence against civilians in Germany in 10 days.

On Friday, an 18-year-old Iranian-German who was obsessed with mass killings shot dead nine people in Munich before turning his gun on himself as police approached.

On 18 July, a 17-year-old who had sought asylum in Germany was shot dead by police after wounding four people from Hong Kong, some of them severely, with an axe on a train and injuring a local resident near the city of Wuerzburg.