Fatal Austria knife attack 'linked to IS'

A knife attack in southern Austria on Saturday that left a teenager dead and five other people injured was linked to the Islamic State group, Austria's Interior Minister Gerhard Karner has said.

The attack took place at Villach, a city near the border with Italy and Slovenia, with a 23-year-old Syrian asylum seeker being detained at the scene.

Speaking to reporters on Sunday, Karner said it was "an Islamist attack with IS connections", the work of "an attacker who, according to the investigations so far, was obviously radicalized online, via the internet, within a very short space of time.

"So those in a position of responsibility, the police, the authorities, must draw the necessary conclusions from that."

In the immediate aftermath of the attack, Peter Kaiser, governor of the province of Carinthia, where Villach is situated, called it an "outrageous atrocity" which "must be met with harsh consequences".

"I have always said with clarity and unambiguously: Those who live in Carinthia, in Austria, have to respect the law and adjust to our rules and values," he added.

As in many other European countries, immigration has become an increasingly important political issue in Austria in recent times.

According to figures from the country's own Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in 2024 nearly 25,000 people applied for asylum in Austria, less than one quarter of the number who applied in 2022.

Of the 2024 applicants, the largest number came from Syria, although at the end of last year, Austria was one of several European countries to halt processing asylum applications from Syrians in the aftermath of the unseating of the country's former president Bashar al-Assad in December.

In an election at the end of Sept 2024, Austria's far-right Freedom Party, or FPO, won 28.9 percent of the vote, almost three points ahead of the conservative People's Party, or OVP, but some way short of a majority, and since then Austria has been in a state of political flux.

Last week, the OVP attempted to form a three-party coalition with the Social Democrats and the liberal NEOS, and when that failed, a two-party coalition with the Social Democrats, which also came to nothing.

Before Saturday's attack, FPO leader Herbert Kickl accused the OVP of playing "power games" and called for new elections, in the hope that this time, his party might win a clear majority.

"The OVP was concerned with power games and posturing - we, the Freedom Party, were concerned with security, prosperity and honesty," he said.
After the attack, Kickl spoke of what he called "a first-class failure of the system, for which a young man in Villach has now had to pay with his life", and said his party's approach that he called Fortress Austria was needed, so the country would "not continue to import conditions like those in Villach".