Overview
- In Stuttgart on Thursday a 47-year-old woman was stabbed and then set on fire at the Milaneo shopping centre; witnesses used a fire extinguisher to save her, a 54-year-old man was arrested and a judge has ordered him held on attempted murder charges after police said a June contact ban had been in place.
- A separate attack in Regensburg on Thursday left a bank employee dead after a 20-year-old attacker stabbed him; special police units arrested the suspect, who had been briefly in custody the night before and is now held on suspicion of murder and robbery.
- A wrong-way head-on crash on the A45 killed three people, including the female driver, and a 12-year-old child later died; prosecutors have commissioned an expert to investigate the crash cause and other passengers remain critically or stably injured.
- On July 23 a truck carrying cocoa beans caught fire on the A1 near Seevetal, severely damaging the road surface and forcing immediate repair closures and lane restrictions through the weekend while investigators probe a suspected technical defect.
- Large wildfires on France’s Atlantic coast have forced tens of thousands to evacuate, prompted President Macron to request the EU civil protection mechanism, and brought international aircraft and helicopters as high temperatures, drought and wind worsen the blazes and strain regional response capacity.