Hundreds of passengers were evacuated from a German train after a knifeman threatened staff on the journey from Cologne to Berlin.
Germany’s national railway Deutsche Bahn stopped and evacuated an ICE train in the northern town of Gifhorn at around 9.40am local time on Tuesday.
A man threatened staff with a knife and another dangerous object, a police spokesman said. A 44 year-old suspect was then arrested by police when the train stopped at Gifhorn.
The train is said to have been evacuated because of the possibility that a dangerous object still on board, German tabloid Bild reported.
Police safely escorted around 340 passengers off the train to the station and later on to Wolfsburg city about 20 kilometres to the east of Gifhorn. Federal police and two dog handlers searched the train and soon confirmed that there was no danger.
No information about potential injuries and the number of passengers affected has yet been disclosed. The suspect was already known to police.
Earlier that morning, he had allegedly insulted staff on another train in Hanover Central station after he was not allowed to take a bike on the train, Bild reported.
It comes as Olaf Scholz in late February dismissed the suggestion of privatising the country’s rail system during a snap election debate.
The chancellor said it would “end as badly as in England, where nothing works anymore”.
Analysis of railway data by the Financial Times found that Deutsche Bahn delivers one of the least reliable services in central Europe, even when compared to the state of the UK’s rail services. Deutsche Bahn runs around 95 per cent of all long-distance trains in the country.
