Police in Germany are searching for an unknown suspect behind a mass stabbing at a festival in the western city of Solingen in which three people were killed.

Eight people were injured, five of them seriously, police said on Saturday as thousands had gathered at a central square for celebrations to mark Solingen’s 650th anniversary. The dead included one woman and two men.

“Both victims and witnesses were currently being questioned,” police in the nearby city of Dusseldorf said in a statement early on Saturday, adding that “a large contingent” of officers was searching for the perpetrator.

At about 9:40pm (19:40 GMT) on Friday, an unidentified man attacked multiple people with a knife, police said.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Saturday that the perpetrator must be caught quickly and punished to fullest extent of the law

The attack occurred at the Festival of Diversity in Solingen, which is located in North Rhine-Westphalia state, Germany’s most populous and bordering the Netherlands.

The events were supposed to run through Sunday, with several stages in central streets offering attractions such as live music, cabaret and acrobatics. Solingen has about 160,000 residents and is located near the bigger cities of Cologne and Dusseldorf.

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Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said “the brutal attack on the city festival in Solingen deeply shocked us”.

“Our security authorities are doing everything they can to catch the perpetrator” of the “horrific act”, she said on Saturday in a statement on social media platform X.

Police on Saturday warned residents who observe anything suspicious not to act on their own initiative but to call the police emergency number.

“We currently have no clues as to his whereabouts,” said a police spokesman. There was also no description of the suspect, Germany’s DPA news agency reported.

The interior minister of North Rhine-Westphalia state, Herbert Reul, visited the scene early on Saturday, telling reporters it was a targeted attack on human life but declining to speculate on the motive.

Fatal stabbings and shootings in Germany are relatively uncommon. A police officer was killed and five people were wounded in a knife attack at a far-right rally in the city of Mannheim in May.

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Faeser recently proposed toughening weapons laws to allow only knives with a blade measuring up to 6cm (2.4 inches) to be carried in public, rather than the currently allowed length of 12cm (4.7 inches).

Witness Lars Breitzke told the local Solinger Tageblatt newspaper he was a few metres from the attack, not far from the festival stage, and “understood from the expression on the singer’s face that something was wrong”.

“And then, a metre away from me, a person fell,” said Breitzke, who at first thought it was someone who had too much to drink.

When he turned around, he saw other people lying on the ground amid pools of blood.

“It tears my heart apart that there was an attack on our city. I have tears in my eyes when