A man wielding an ax on a street packed with soccer fans was shot by police Sunday in Hamburg, Germany, just hours before the city hosted a European Championship match.
The man threatened police officers with “a pickaxe and an incendiary device,” a police spokesman said Sunday. When he did not respond to warnings, he was shot by police, police said.
The man was injured and is being treated, they confirmed. No fans or police were injured.
The incident took place in Hamburg’s entertainment district, an area of the city known as the Reeperbahn, which is filled with restaurants and bars. At the time, the area was packed with thousands of fans who had come to watch the Netherlands play Poland on Sunday afternoon.
According to a Hamburg police spokesman, the man came out of a small restaurant with a double-edged ax and a fire bomb and threatened nearby officers.
According to Henning Hünerbein, a German journalist filming outside the restaurant, police initially deployed pepper spray and fired a warning shot into the air before shooting the attacker. Multiple gunshots could be heard, a sudden and jarring intrusion into the festive lunchtime atmosphere.
Police said the man was injured but they were unable to provide further updates on his condition. He was put into an ambulance after the shooting and driven away.
The location of the shooting is a 10-minute walk from the city’s official fan zone, which had thousands of fans at the time, and from the 57,000-seat Volksparkstadion, where the Netherlands and Poland arrives. meet in the first of three matches on Sunday.
The shooting happened on the third day of the month-long tournament, which brings together 24 of the continent’s best teams every four years, and amid a heavy police presence.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
