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Lugano (AP) - After the knife attack by a woman suspected of sympathy for the Islamic State (IS) terrorist militia in Switzerland, the authorities' investigations continue.
"This attack does not surprise me," said the director of the Fedpol Federal Police, Nicoletta della Valle, a few hours after the attack.
Such acts would happen anywhere in the world.
The woman could be arrested immediately after the crime, a seriously injured victim was not in danger of death.
According to the police, the 28-year-old Swiss attacked two women in a department store in her home town in Lugano in the canton of Ticino on Tuesday afternoon.
One victim was badly injured, one slightly.
According to initial findings, the alleged IS sympathizer grabbed a woman by the neck while injuring the second woman in the neck with a stabbing weapon.
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“I heard screams and turned around.
Then I saw a woman on the ground - in the middle of a pool of blood », said an eyewitness loudly« La Regione ».
As Ticino media reported, the attacker is said to have previously stolen the knife from the shopping center's household department.
According to witness statements in the media, she is said to have shouted during the attack that she was a member of the IS terrorist group.
The perpetrator was stopped by a couple, pulled by the hair and held until the police arrived.
The Federal Prosecutor's Office has now started an investigation.
It was a "suspected terrorist-motivated attack," as the Federal Police announced to Fedpol.
For the commander of the Ticino canton police Matteo Cocchi, the threat of terrorism is omnipresent.
There are currently no more details.
The President of the Ticino government, Norman Gobbi, assumed that the woman had been radicalized: "The situation is extremely serious."
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A connection to a knife attack in September, which is also being investigated for a suspected terrorist background, is currently not known.
But it will be determined.
In mid-September, a 29-year-old Portuguese was stabbed to death in a kebab restaurant.
The imprisoned alleged perpetrator is said to have had connections to Islamists.
The police in Switzerland have been on alert since the terrorist attack that killed four people in Vienna in early November.
Austria's Chancellor Sebastian Kurz condemned the latest knife attack on Twitter.
He expressed his solidarity with Switzerland.
We will stand up to Islamist terrorism in Europe together and defend our own values, said Kurz.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 201125-99-452844 / 2