Hong Kong family attacked with axe on German train
A Hong Kong family were brutally attacked by a teenager with an axe on a train in Germany.
The elder daughter of the Yau family told local media that her parents tried to defend her sister's boyfriend when the axe-wielding teenager set upon him.
"Originally, the assailant was attacking my sister's boyfriend. When my mother and father saw that, they went up to get in the way, and they got injured," Ms Sylvia, 30, told Hong Kong-based Apple Daily on Tuesday night.
The boyfriend, Mr Edmund Au Yeung, 30, and Ms Sylvia's 62-year-old father are in intensive care with serious head injuries.
Her sister Tracy, 26, and mother, 58, were also injured, while Ms Sylvia's 17-year-old brother was unharmed, AFP reported.
The 17-year-old attacker injured five people in the assault on Monday, which was claimed by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) group.
A video released by ISIS on Tuesday purportedly shows "Mohammed Riyadh" - knife in hand - announcing he would carry out an "operation" in Germany and presenting himself as a "soldier of the caliphate".
HOLIDAY
Ms Sylvia and her husband, who travelled to Germany on Tuesday night accompanied by officials from Hong Kong's immigration department, described how her family had been enjoying their holiday before the attack.
The attack happened at 9.15pm, as the train was travelling between Treuchtlingen and Wuerzburg in Bavaria, southern Germany.
Witnesses said the carriage looked "like a slaughterhouse", with blood covering the floor.
The teenager also attacked a woman walking her dog along the river as he tried to flee the train. She is now fighting for her life.
He was shot dead by police as he began to attack officers with the axe.
Meanwhile, the German authorities have cast doubt on whether the teenager was really an Afghan refugee. They said yesterday that he might have been from Pakistan.
They believe he might have pretended to be Afghan on arrival in Germany last year to have a better chance at securing asylum, television station ZDF reported.
In the ISIS video, the youth uses phrases of a dialect of Pashto spoken in Pakistan and not Afghanistan, and experts have indicated that his accent is also clearly Pakistani, ZDF reported.
A Pakistani document was also found in his room.
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