Woman arrested after six injured in knife attack on bus in Germany

A 32-year-old woman has been arrested after six people were injured in a knife attack on a bus headed to a festival in western Germany.

Three people are in a life-threatening condition following the attack, police said on Friday.

Authorities said Saturday that there was no evidence of a political or religious motive.

The attack took place on a bus which was on its way to a local festival in Siegen, east of Cologne, at about 7.40pm on Friday.

At least another 40 people were on board the bus when the attack took place.

The six injured people are aged between 16 and 30 and are all from the region, police said.

By Saturday morning, three of them had left the hospital.

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Local authorities said they planned to go ahead with the festival.

The stabbing in Siegen happened a week after a knife attack in Solingen, a city in the same state of North Rhine-Westphalia, in which a suspected Islamic extremist from Syria who had avoided being deported is accused of killing three people and wounding another eight.

The Solingen attack prompted the governing coalition to draw up plans to tighten knife laws and make deportations easier.

Police said the woman arrested in Siegen was a German citizen.

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