German police hunt knife attacker after three killed at Solingen festival

The attacker is believed to have deliberately stabbed his victims in the neck, local media report.

Germany's Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Saturday that the assailant must be caught quickly and punished to fullest extent of the law.

Interior minister Nancy Faeser expressed her condolences, saying security authorities are "doing everything they can to catch the perpetrator and determine the background of the attack".

Solingen - a city in North Rhineland-Westphalia famous for its steel industry - has about 160,000 inhabitants. It lies about 15 miles (25 km) east of Düsseldorf and north-east of Cologne.

In a news conference in the early hours of Saturday, regional interior minister Herbert Reul said: "You don't want to believe what you see here at the crime scene. It weighs heavily. My thoughts are with the relatives of the victims and the injured. We can only pray that the seriously injured will survive."

The city's authorities asked people to leave the Fronhof market area after the attack at about 22:00 local time (21:00 BST) on Friday, as police set up security cordons.

Emergency crews at the scene were seen treating the injured and police later deployed 40 tactical vehicles in the hunt for the stabbing suspect, according to German news outlet Bild.

The vehicles are being commanded by SEK (Special Task Force) officers.

Roads have been blocked and residents told to stay indoors as officers carry out their search.

Speaking on Friday, Philipp Müller, one of the festival organisers, said people were shocked but left the square peacefully after the attack.

Eyewitness Lars Breitzke told the Solinger Tageblatt newspaper that he knew something was wrong when he saw a singer on stage with a strange expression on their face.

"And then a person fell over just a metre away from me," he said.