IS flag left by train attacker as group claims rampage

Wuerzburg, : A 17-year-old Afghan refugee who attacked four people with an axe on a German train had an Islamic State flag at his house, police said Tuesday shortly before the extremist group claimed him as one of its fighters.

German authorities said they had found the hand-painted IS flag among the belongings of the asylum-seeker, who seriously injured four members of a family of tourists from Hong Kong on his rampage. The assailant was killed by police as he tried to flee.

"The perpetrator of the stabbing attack in Germany was one of the fighters of the Islamic State," the IS-linked Amaq news agency said, in a claim later echoed on its radio station Al-Bayan.

The assault took place on a regional train near the southern city of Wuerzburg late Monday.

Two of the victims were critically hurt, said Joachim Herrmann, the interior minister of the state of Bavaria.

"We hope that those who were gravely injured make it," Herrmann told ZDF public television.

He later said that locals who knew the assailant, identified in media reports as Riaz A., described him as "calm and even-keeled" and a "devout Muslim who did not appear to be radical or a fanatic".

"According to the investigation thus far, there was no evidence on site to point to him belonging to the Islamist network," Herrmann said.

However he said police had found a letter he apparently left for his father, who still lives in Afghanistan, in which he talked about the world's Muslims, saying they "must defend themselves".