German police say they have arrested a man suspected of the attack in which a 30-year-old Spanish man was seriously injured at the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, AFP reports.

The unidentified assailant used a knife in the attack at around 18:00 (19:00 BST), police said.

The victim's condition is stable after emergency surgery.

Officers, some with assault rifles, cordoned off the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a grim network of concrete stelae located near the Brandenburg Gate.

More than three hours after the attack, a man approached a group of police officers at the scene before the officers tackled him to the ground.

One of the officers shouted, "We have a suspect," as other officers rushed toward him. The man was handcuffed as he lay face down on the ground.

"We have just arrested a male suspect," confirmed police spokesman Florian Nath. "This is probably the suspect who attacked the 30-year-old Spanish national at 6 p.m. here at the memorial."

Nath said police saw the man in custody had "blood on his hands".

Police stressed that so far "we know nothing about the motive" or the identity of the detained suspect, who has refused to talk to them. The attack came two days before national elections and after a string of deadly attacks, including car burnings and stabbings, that shocked Germany.

Earlier on 21 February, German police said they had arrested an 18-year-old Russian man on suspicion of planning a "politically motivated" attack in Berlin.

He was detained late on 20 February in the state of Brandenburg, which surrounds Berlin, police and prosecutors said in a statement.

Authorities did not provide further details about the alleged plot to attack, but the newspaper Tagesspiegel reported that the suspect was Chechen and was allegedly planning an attack on the Israeli embassy.

Riot police and specialist officers were involved in the arrest, which was made following a tip-off.

Germany has been increasingly alarmed by growing anti-Jewish sentiment since the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, which sparked the Gaza war.

According to the Internal Intelligence Agency, a record 5,164 anti-Semitic crimes were recorded in 2023, up from 2,641 the previous year.

In the early September attack, German police shot dead a young Austrian man known to have links to radical Islam as he prepared to carry out an attack on the Israeli consulate in Munich.

In December, a man drove a jeep at high speed through a crowd at a Christmas market, killing six people and injuring hundreds in the eastern city of Magdeburg.

In January, a man with a kitchen knife attacked a group in a kindergarten, killing a two-year-old boy and a man who tried to protect the children.

Another major attack followed just 10 days before the election, when a man drove a Mini Cooper through a street rally in Munich, killing a two-year-old and his mother and injuring dozens. | BGNES