German officials are weighing up how to react to what is being treated as the first attack with a jihadist motive by an asylum seeker on German soil, who prosecutors suggested may have decided to carry out the attack just days earlier.

A 17-year-old Afghan armed with an axe and a knife attacked passengers on a regional train in northern Bavaria on Monday evening, seriously injuring four Chinese tourists before being shot dead by police.

Prosecutors said on Tuesday that two of the injured were suffering from “acute life-threatening” wounds.

The attack had been carried out with an “Islamist religious motive”, a spokesperson for the state office of criminal investigations said. A hand-painted Islamic State flag had been found in the teenager’s room at his foster home, as well as a college book with a text written in Pashtun.

Lothar Köhler, the director of the Bavarian investigations office, said he understood the text to be a farewell letter to the teenager’s father, in which he complained about “nonbelievers”. In one key passage, he wrote: “Now pray for me that I can take revenge on these nonbelievers, and pray for me, that I make my way into heaven.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/19/germany-train-attack-could-prompt-rethink-of-counter-terrorism-policy