Radicalized online?

Australia: Police shoot knife attacker (16)

(Bild: AP/Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Police in the Western Australian city of Perth shot and killed a 16-year-old boy on Saturday evening after he attacked a man with a kitchen knife. The victim is in hospital. The crime may have a terrorist background.

"At this stage, it appears that he acted alone," said Western Australia's Premier Roger Cook in a televised press conference about the attacker (see video above). He had stabbed a man in his 30s in the back. According to the authorities, the victim was taken to hospital and is in a stable condition.

Concerned calls from Muslims
According to the state authorities, there are signs that the boy was radicalized on the internet. Prior to the attack, calls had also been received from concerned members of the local Muslim community. Cook thanked them for their help.

The scene of the crime in Perth(Bild: AP/Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Gov. Anthony Albanese, who was briefed by police and investigators, said the threat was over. "We are a peace-loving nation and there is no place for violent extremism in Australia," Albanese wrote on the X platform.

Priest stabbed during mass
The incident occurred just a few weeks after an Assyrian Christian bishop was stabbed to death in Sydney during a livestreamed mass. Police have since charged several teenagers with terrorism offenses in connection with the incident.

Shortly before the attack on the cleric, a knifeman had stabbed six people to death in a shopping center in the Sydney beach town of Bondi.