A 40-year-old African migrant has been arrested after allegedly pushing a woman and her eight-year-old son into the path of an oncoming express train.

The incident took place at Frankfurt’s central railway station at 10 am on Monday morning and allegedly saw the African randomly target the woman and her son, pushing them off platform 7, German tabloid Bild reports.

The woman was able to roll into the void between tracks but was unable to reach her son, who was hit by an express train and died at the scene.

Investigators say the man, who has been identified as an Eritrean migrant, attempted to flee the scene but was pursued by witnesses and was later arrested by police. The motive for the attack remains unclear according to police who have yet to establish any links between the migrant and the victims.

The incident comes just over a week since Bosnian migrant Jackson B. was accused of throwing 34-year-old Anja B. in front of a train in North-Rhine Westphalia that also led to her death.

Police say there were no links between the Bosnian and the woman, while witnesses say he silently moved toward her and pushed her from behind into the path of the train.

Last year another migrant, a 23-year-old asylum seeker from India, attempted to kill a 5-year-old boy along with himself in Wuppertal after grabbing the boy from his family at a train station and jumping in front of a moving train.

The driver of the oncoming train was unable to stop but the pair ended up underneath the train and were unharmed. The asylum seeker was later taken to a psychiatric facility.

Several other incidents of violence have been carried out by migrants in and around train stations in Germany this year including a 50-man brawl in Rastatt, a Syrian man attacking police in a rampage in Augsburg and an Islamic State-linked Iraqi who allegedly attempted to derail trains in Bavaria.