Two women have been injured after allegedly being stabbed in a department store in southern Switzerland in what authorities have called an “alleged terrorist attack”.
A suspect has been arrested, police said, after the women were attacked in the city of Lugano and left with non-life threatening injuries.
Swiss federal police said on their Twitter feed that an attack “presumably of terrorist motivation” took place in in the Italian-speaking city on Tuesday afternoon, adding that federal prosecutors were investigating.
The federal prosecutors’ office said that “an alleged terrorist attack against several people in a department store” had taken place.
Police in the southern Ticino region, which includes Lugano, said a 28-year-old Swiss citizen living in the Lugano area had allegedly attacked two women, wounding one person in the neck with a sharp weapon.
In a statement, the Ticino police said one of the victims sustained serious but not life-threatening injuries, while the other had minor injuries.
Catherine Maret, a spokeswoman for the federal police, said the suspect was “known to police” and had “appeared recently in police investigations with regard to terrorism” — specifically jihadism. She declined to comment further.
She declined to comment on Swiss media reports indicating that the attacker shouted “Allahu Akbar” — or “God is great” — during the incident.
